Between 1980 and 2013, Madagascar experienced 63 major natural disasters, including cyclones, floods, severe droughts, earthquakes, epidemics,[4][5] and a "locust plague of biblical proportions".

[9] Another WFP official said the situation was the second worst food crisis he had seen in his life after the 1998 famine in Bahr el Ghazal, in present-day South Sudan.

[2] An early report conducted in June 2021 by Duke University School of Nursing found that three-fourths of vanilla farmers in the northern Sava Region of Madagascar were also suffering from food insecurity due to fluctuations of the vanilla market and natural disasters, potentially indicating that the food crisis is spreading to other parts of Madagascar.

[5] On 30 June 2021, the WFP said that a "biblical" famine was approaching in several African countries, especially in Madagascar and that the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant "impacted worse in low-income and underdeveloped nations amid a global pandemic".

[14] Meanwhile, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned of "severe malnutrition" on 130,000 Malagasy children aged five and younger, by early June 2021.

On 1 July 2021, UN agencies reported that in southern villages, people had resorted to eating ashes mixed with tamarind and shoe leather.

[20] Also, Time quoted WFP's chief Beasley as describing the crisis as "climate change-caused" and the first in modern history to be caused by such phenomenon.

[23] The UN continued to monitor the situation during July 2021, stating that children under the age of five with lifelong nutrition problems had increased to half a million and that over 110,000 were in "acute and severe malnutrition".

[14] Leaders of the G20 group also discussed the situation and pledged to do more to help the world's hungry and to combat climate change with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio giving a conference on the issue.

[16] Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began to set up mobile clinics in the country in March 2021 in anticipation of the incoming drought.

[7] The government of President Andry Rajoelina received backlash over the edging famine, with a journalist confronting him during a press conference in Antananarivo.

A report of July 2021 said that if "no action is taken", the situation is going to peak by January 2022 and to worsen drastically between October and December 2021, with insufficient food stock and inflation caused by COVID-19.

[37] On 19 July 2021, Rajoelina called for a "radical and lasting change" during a summit of the International Development Association in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast.

[36] In late July 2021, the U.S. embassy further expanded its aid through USAID to more than 100,000 people in the south providing food to children and pregnant women facing malnutrition.

[38] German Roman Catholic bishops have pled for help for children in southern Madagascar, with Archbishop Ludwig Schick leading efforts to raise awareness of the situation of famine in the country.