China also provides much of the food that keeps North Koreans alive after repeated harvest failures.

The harvest failures were devastating for the northern Italian economy.

In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely to increase.

For these reasons it is not prone to the risk of total harvest failure even in low and uncertain rainfall regions.

The consequences of the 1848 revolution caused harvest failures and inflation, and the city population diminished by a large emigration.

Local villagers, impoverished after a series of harvest failures, were paid a shilling per day to tunnel underground to mine chalk.

Imported corn staved off the worst effects of harvest failure and some communities appear to have escaped altogether.

In both cases, the impact of harvest failure was exacerbated by wartime demands on the food supply.

Finally, the first response of any adult faced with a harvest failure is to tighten her belt.

But recurrent harvest failures, the most notorious of which led to devastating famine in 1891, imposed severe hardship on many.