What drives a modern famine and why it can be prevented

Famine is not a natural disaster that arrives without warning. The June to November 2026 edition of Hunger Hotspots, the joint early warning report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), states the point directly. Modern famines are almost always human-made, foreseeable and preventable. They are the result of conflict and blocked access to food, made worse by weak coordination, delayed action and insufficient funding.

That framing matters because it changes what famine is understood to be. A famine in 2026 is rarely a story of food simply running out across a whole country. It is the outcome of specific shocks that pile up on populations who have already lost the means to cope. The 2026 report identifies 13 hunger hotspots where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen, and a risk of Famine was identified in four countries or territories, namely the Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza and Somalia. Understanding how a crisis reaches that point is the first step toward stopping it.

How acute food insecurity is measured

Before looking at the drivers, it helps to know what the warnings actually describe. Acute food insecurity is classified using the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and its West African equivalent, the Cadre Harmonisé (CH). Both use a five-phase scale that runs from Phase 1 (None or minimal) through Phase 2 (Stressed), Phase 3 (Crisis), Phase 4 (Emergency) and Phase 5 (Catastrophe or Famine).

Phase 3 means households face food consumption gaps reflected in high acute malnutrition, or can only meet basic needs by selling off the assets they depend on to earn a living. Phase 4 means some households face large food gaps with very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality. Phase 5 means an extreme lack of food persists even after a household has exhausted every coping strategy, with starvation, destitution and death already evident. A formal Famine classification requires evidence that malnutrition and mortality have crossed critical thresholds, which is why it is rarely declared and often declared late. By the time the criteria are met, large numbers of people have already died.

This is the central reason for early warning. Waiting for a Famine declaration means waiting until intervention can no longer prevent the worst outcomes.

Conflict is the primary driver

Armed conflict and organized violence are the leading cause of acute food insecurity in 12 of the 13 hotspots identified for 2026. Conflict levels have continued to climb, with roughly one in six people worldwide exposed to armed violence and conflict levels close to double what they were five years earlier.

Conflict produces hunger through several connected channels rather than a single one. It forces people to flee, and as of June 2025 around 117.3 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced, straining the livelihoods of both the displaced and the communities that host them. It disrupts planting and harvest, damages roads, markets and water systems, and cuts households off from the trade they rely on to buy food. In the most severe cases, it also blocks humanitarian organisations from reaching the people who need help most. The Sudan illustrates the pattern. A risk of Famine was identified in 14 areas under a reasonable worst-case scenario, with most of those areas expected to remain at risk through the harvest into January 2027, as violence intensifies and spreads across Greater Kordofan, Darfur and Blue Nile State.

Where conflict is protracted and coping capacity is already exhausted, this combination of displacement, disrupted harvests and blocked aid is what pushes an emergency toward famine.

Economic shocks erode what is left

Conflict rarely acts alone. Global economic stress, marked by slower growth, renewed inflation and shocks to energy, freight and fertiliser markets, compounds the damage across several hotspots. The mechanism is straightforward. When fuel and fertiliser cost more, food costs more to grow and to move, and households whose incomes have already collapsed can afford less of it.

The 2026 report traces some of this pressure to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the route through which close to a quarter of global seaborne oil trade passes, along with large volumes of liquefied natural gas and fertiliser. Disruptions there helped drive international average fuel prices up 40% month-on-month in March 2026, while constraints on fertiliser exports from the Persian Gulf pushed urea prices higher and signalled tighter supply. Currency volatility and limited access to foreign exchange make the squeeze worse in import-dependent economies, eroding household purchasing power as import bills rise. Countries with little domestic production and persistent economic crises, such as Yemen, are especially exposed.

Weather extremes and a shift toward El Niño

The third driver is climate. Weather extremes and growing climate variability are intensifying acute food insecurity, and the 2026 outlook is shaped by a likely transition to El Niño conditions, with forecasts pointing to a high probability of development between May and July and strengthening toward the end of the year. For farmers planning a season, the real danger lies in the timing and spread of anomalies across many regions at once rather than in any single dry spell. Our analysis of how the 2026 El Niño affects crops and food prices covers the agricultural risks in more detail.

El Niño does not mean drought everywhere. It tends to redistribute rainfall unevenly. Drier conditions are more likely across the western Sahel, parts of southern Africa and Haiti, while wetter conditions and increased flooding are expected in eastern Africa and parts of the Near East and Central Asia later in the year. In the Horn of Africa, the effect lands on populations already weakened by earlier failures. In Somalia, repeated poor rainy seasons have caused significant crop losses, depleted pasture and water, and driven large-scale displacement, with each shock compounding the last. Afghanistan faces a similar accumulation, where consecutive droughts, low snowpack and above-average temperatures have already reduced water available for the 2026 cropping season.

Climate is also the driver with the most usable lead time. El Niño is one of the few large climate signals forecasters can flag months ahead, which leaves a window to shift planting calendars, match crops to the forecast and manage water early. The traits that help crops withstand erratic seasons are covered in our overview of climate-resilient crops and breeding.

The funding collapse that turns risk into catastrophe

The fourth driver is the one most directly within human control, and in 2026 it is moving in the wrong direction. Humanitarian assistance to food sectors in crisis contexts fell by an estimated 59% between 2022 and 2025, returning to levels last seen in 2016 and 2017. That decline arrived precisely as the share of analysed populations facing high levels of acute food insecurity doubled globally. More people need help, and less help is available.

Funding gaps do more than leave needs unmet. Cuts to assessment, monitoring and analysis weaken the evidence base that humanitarian and government responders use to decide where to send limited resources, which is most damaging in the underfunded, high-risk places where good information matters most. When early warning weakens as funding falls, a foreseeable crisis becomes harder to see and harder to stop.

How the drivers compound

No single driver explains a modern famine. What turns a difficult year into a catastrophe is the way the drivers reinforce one another. Conflict displaces farming households and blocks aid. Economic shocks raise the prices of food and fuel, leaving those households unable to afford them. A poor rainy season deprives them of the harvest that might have carried them through. And a funding shortfall removes the assistance that could have filled the gap. Each shock on its own might be survivable. Stacked together on a population that has already sold its livestock, spent its savings and eaten its seed stock, they are not.

This compounding is also why famine is foreseeable. The drivers are visible months in advance, since conflict trajectories, fuel and fertiliser prices, seasonal climate forecasts and funding pipelines can all be tracked. The Hunger Hotspots report is built on exactly this kind of forward-looking analysis, drawing on conflict analysts, economists and climate specialists to flag where conditions are most likely to deteriorate. It works alongside the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises from the Global Network Against Food Crises, which looked back at 47 countries and territories affected by food crises in 2025.

Why prevention works and costs less

The case for acting early is practical as well as moral. Early intervention saves lives, protects the assets and livelihoods that let households recover, and does so at substantially lower cost than waiting. Once a family has sold its animals and tools to buy food, rebuilding takes years and far more money than the assistance that would have kept those assets intact.

The report distinguishes two kinds of response. Anticipatory action is taken in the narrow window between an early warning trigger and the moment a hazard hits, with the aim of protecting vulnerable populations before the shock lands. Emergency response addresses needs that have already emerged. Both depend on the same foundation. Reliable early warning, the funding to act on it, and coordination across the humanitarian, development and peace efforts together address immediate hunger alongside its underlying causes. Strengthening local food production sits alongside these measures, and approaches such as home gardens can help vulnerable households diversify diets and buffer against shocks.

The conclusion the 2026 report keeps returning to is that famine is a choice as much as an event. The signals are readable, the tools to respond exist, and early action is cheaper than late rescue. What remains is the political commitment and the funding to act on warnings while they still mean something.