Laverne Delano, 14, of Johnson City, Tenn., her question:

HAVE WE ALWAYS HAD FAMINE?

Famine is a severe shortage of food, generally affecting a wide area and large number of people. Acute shortages of foodstuffs have existed periodically and in isolated areas since ancient times. Historical records, however, cover only a few thousand years and estimates of the extent of famines have been very approximate.

The catastrophic nature of major famines is unquestioned. Most researchers list about 400 such famines in recorded history.

Populations in Asia, particularly in the Indian subcontinent and China, have been decimated repeatedly by starvation as a result of drought. Thus, an estimated 10 million people died in India in 1769 70 and a similar number of people died in the 1877 78 famine in northern China.

Warfare has been another major cause of famines in these areas. In 1943 an estimated 3 to 5 million people died in China's Henan Province as a result of war caused starvation.

Parts of Africa have suffered through the years with severe famines.

Natural causes of food scarcities are droughts, floods, insect plagues, plant diseases and earthquakes. A population increase disproportionate to the food producing capacity of an area is also a major cause of famine as are inequitable or inefficient distribution of foodstuffs and the crop destruction that occurs during wars and civil upheavals.

North and South America have been relatively free of large scale famines. Europe has suffered famines only occasionally, although during World War II many thousands of deaths could be attributed to starvation.

The immediate consequence of famine for those suffering its effects is malnutrition. Malnutrition renders the body vulnerable to a wide variety of diseases that may prove fatal before death from actual starvation can occur.

The large scale sociological consequences of famine are complex and ongoing. Undoubtedly one of the most dramatic is population migration, such as the emigration of about 1.6 million people from Ireland by 1848    chiefly to the United States    following the potato famine.

The human body can adapt fairly well to a reduction in the intake of nutrients. Cutting the intake by half, for example, will reduce body weight by about one fourth, but a person may subsist at this level for some time without necessarily experiencing further effects.

Any additional drop in intake, however, can be dangerous.

Starvation itself is only one of the possible results. Equally serious are the diseases that more successfully attack the undernourished body and that frequently lead to epidemics such as plague, typhus and cholera. These kinds of epidemics decimate the total population, not only those who are starving and poor.

Adults can generally recover successfully from a period of famine, but children may suffer permanent physical and mental damage from being undernourished at a vulnerable time of rapid growth.