Famine

I have often pointed out to students and other interested parties that famine is generally the result of human behaviors that structurally induce scarcity of food.  Often the cause is government action directly designed to deny food from reaching portions of the population to force death and/or migration upon those people.  In other cases a cause of famine is the involvement of the working age population in violent conflicts that remove them from the labor pool that would be raising and distributing food.  

Right now in South Sudan aid workers are warning of potential famine.  At the same time, the UN is appealing for food aid in Africa.  For my two cents, we are seeing a "perfect storm" building.  The world public is somewhat aid weary at present.  Workers are fleeing the fields to enter the conflict or to flee the conflict.  The UN is already cutting food aid doles to refugees in Africa.  Famine is never inevitable, but famine is more likely now in South Sudan.  I am puzzled by this potential famine, though.  

In the 1980s famine in Ethiopia was a direct result of government policy that would not let food stuff in to the areas where drought and strife had most greatly impacted the population.  In the late 1990s and early part of the 2000s the Sudanese govt directly impacted local famine in areas of southern Sudan and Darfur where the govt of Sudan was sponsoring and directing violence against the black African population.  I have read nothing to indicate that the govt of South Sudan will block any food aid to the groups that the current government led by Salva Kiir accuses of supporting the rebels led by Riek Machar.  Concerns mount over attrocities perpetrated by both sides, though, and denial of food aid is a potential extension of these attrocities.  My puzzle is whether or not this famine will be the first that can be directly related to a lack of food availability rather than structurally (man-made) shortage of food?  Or, does the lack of food aid being made available equal a structural shortage, just not of the making of the local authority?  Will be watching and thinking more about this potential famine situation.