On Sept 29, 2015, world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly adopted Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2—“end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture ending world hunger by 2030”. Meeting this goal is likely to be a complex and difficult undertaking: conquering endemic hunger and malnutrition will demand a raft of international policy measures for agriculture, poverty reduction, and nutrition. But one dimension of hunger in human civilisations—eliminating epidemics of starvation, namely famines—looks very hopeful. The near-abolition of great famines is a huge but unheralded achievement of our era. One of the great scourges of humanity—food crises that cause widespread hunger, disrupt society, and kill hundreds of thousands of people—are on the point of being consigned to history. There is good reason to believe that this success is driven primarily by the demise of total war and totalitarianism. It follows that eliminating famine requires further reducing armed conflict and tyranny.