InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Future of Food > Student Materials > Module 11: Human-Environment Interactions > Module 11.2: Food Access and Food Insecurity > Food Shortages, Chronic Malnutrition, and Famine: Coupled Human-Natural Systems aspects
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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Initial Publication Date: January 11, 2018

Food Shortages, Chronic Malnutrition, and Famine: Coupled Human-Natural Systems aspects

Food Crises and Interacting Elements of the Natural and Human Systems

This section employs the framework of Coupled Natural-Human Systems (CHNS) in order to illustrate the interacting elements of natural and human systems that can combine to produce severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine food systems around the world. These CHNS concepts build on the diagrams and concepts in module 10 and 11.1. You will also apply these concepts in the summative assessment on the next page.

As you read this brief description consult figure 11.2.2 below. It depicts that interacting conditions within the human and natural systems, combined with driving forces and feedbacks, are at the core of many cases of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine in agri-food systems.

The best place to begin interpreting Figure 11.2.2 is by focusing on the driving forces emanating out of both the human and natural systems. Human system drivers often involve political and military instability and/or market failures and volatility (such as prices). Most cases of famine, as well as many instances of severe food shortages and chronic malnutrition, involve these human drivers. In addition, human drivers not only drive vulnerability in natural systems but may act first and foremost on human systems, reducing the adaptive capacity of consumers and producers, for example by reducing the purchasing power of poor populations during price spikes.

Figure 11.2.2 also shows that drivers emanate from the natural system. Climate change and variation, such as drought and flooding, often contribute to cases of famine, as well as severe food shortages and chronic malnutrition.

These drivers, however, are only PART of the causal linkages of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. Similarly important are the conditions of poor resilience (potentially arising as result of weak social infrastructure), low levels of adaptive capacity and poverty. Poverty is tragically involved as a cause of nearly all cases of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. For Mark Bittman, the author of the required reading on the previous page, the link between poverty and failures of food systems, rather than a failure of any other human or natural factors such as food production, food distribution, or overpopulation, is the central thesis he advances in his short opinion piece. You may want to glance again at this reading in order to remind yourself of why poverty is so deeply implicated in the failures of agri-food systems.

Weak or inadequate resilience (R) and adaptive capacity (AC), along with vulnerability (V), are also symptomatic of natural systems prone to severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. For example, cropping and livestock systems unable to tolerate extreme conditions illustrate a low level of adaptive capacity (AC) that can contribute significantly to the failure of agri-food systems.


These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »