Quote Originally Posted by antisocialmunky View Post
It is worth mentioning that they are for different reason. They had weather problems, we have economic problems are failures of government.
Although I agree that today's food shortages could be solved by better distribution (and a considerable number of westerners tightening their belts), weather still plays a role. In the West we don't notice it because we can simply get our food from somewhere else. And governmental and economic failures played a role in historical famines as well. Didn't Julian the Apostate try to solve a food-shortage in Antioch by fixing the grain-price? The grain-merchants responded by keeping the grain of the market. Julian was not the first (and presumably not the last) ruler to make that mistake.