Famine scales

Famine scales are metrics of food security going from entire populations with adequate food to full-scale famine. The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition. For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War. This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions. As different levels of food insecurity demand different types of response, there have been various methods of famine measurement proposed to help agencies determine the appropriate response.

The personification of Famine, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is represented as a man riding a black horse holding a pair of famine scales speaking the phrase “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”