Late in May 1974, the suffering caused by two successive harvest failures was at its height, and the planting rains of earlier that month had not been followed by more, causing the early millet to sprout and die in all the fields across the north of Kano State. In an unlit government rest house on the outskirts of Gumel, Cecil Woodham-Smith's The great hunger provided pretty sombre reading against a mocking background of sporadic lightning in the night sky. There is no denying that famine may hold a morbid fascination for those not called to suffer it, a fascination the more powerful for the way the subject transcends the bounds of culture and of history. There is no use in pretending a scientific detachment from the tragedies and triumphs, the greed and generosity, the degradation and the dignity in a major social disaster. Yet to further understanding, something more than committed journalism is called for. Tools of observation and enquiry, knocked up in the workshops of the social and environmental sciences, ought to help the search for system and significance.

According to a minority view, the relations between society and its environment lie at the heart of geography and form its noblest theme. A famine following in the wake of a major drought ought therefore to offer quite an opportunity. Not many responses, however, are evident. There is good enough reason for this.