What exactly is famine?

What exactly is famine? I have heard most of this, way back when i was in high-school When we were talking about world history. My history teacher never failed to explain anything that may sound interesting/unusual/odd or just about anything that needs a lot of explanation. This was one topic that i can still remember how my classmates including me were totally shocked by the truths, and that we have no idea that this was really happening. I really thought it was just some parts of a movie. but it was real. Many parts in the world has suffered from famine, nut of course there were always the other side of the story.

A famine is a widespread shortage of food that may apply to any faunal species, which phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Famines in modern time are typically linked to overpopulation, as the number of humans exceeds regional carrying capacity. It has been a source of a mass death for so many places around the world. Like North Korea, Vietnam, India and also the intriguing
holodomor

Our class then was very interested with this discussion,These problems that occurred in the past, should be just a past and hopefully no more famine problems will occur, the question is. Is that possible? With the world economic crisis, I'm really not sure.