Dictionary definitions such as “extreme and general scarcity of food” (Oxford
English Dictionary, 2017) do not give measurable parameters, which were lacking
until relatively recently when the Food and Agriculture Organization developed a
measurement scale. This scale, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification
(IPC), codes populations in a given geographic area according to five
categories, or phases, with Phase Five being the worst (Figure 1). The IPC has
brought important new rigor to defining famines and its usage has grown
substantially since being originally applied to Somalia.