The economics of famine does not lend itself to scientific treatment. Research such as this book summarizes must be done under the most difficult, dangerous and unpredictable of institutional and environmental hardships.
Research contrasts with the horror and moral judgment most observers experience when famine strikes.
Famines and poisonous snakes are things one would rather not meet in the wild, and in chance encounters the compulsion is either to avoid or eliminate them as soon as possible. However, for those of us faced with the task of dealing with their anatomy and effects, there is no substitute for good science. Famine in Africa is good science. The soundness of the research is assured in that the three authors early in their careers were the Institute for Food Policy Research. Joachim von Braun is now at the University of Bonn, Germany where he heads the Economics Department in the Center for Development Research, and Patrick Webb is now on the faculty of Tufts University s School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston, Massachusetts.