🎓 On Famines: why and how they happen. To who?

Agrarian societies experience famine for a variety of reasons, including poor governance, war, and weather.

Awhile back, Bret Devereaux wrote a really great article series about how ancient armies handled logistics, and in it he made the point that most of them feed themselves at the expense of local populations. I hadn't realized quite how damaging the "foraging" of ancient armies could be to local farmers, and further, I somehow hadn't connected the idea of…