dearth

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A scarce supply; a lack.
• noun Shortage of food; famine.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Dearness; costliness; high price.
• noun A condition of dearness or costliness from scarcity; hence, failure of production or supply; famine from failure or loss of crops.
• noun Absence; lack; barrenness; poverty: as, a dearth of love; a dearth of honest men.
• noun Synonyms Famine, etc. See scarcity.
• To cause a dearth or scarcity in; hence, to raise the price of.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Scarcity which renders dear; want; lack; specifically, lack of food on account of failure of crops; famine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun this sense?) A period or condition when food is rare and hence expensive; famine.
• noun by extension Scarcity; a lack or short supply.
• noun obsolete Dearness; the quality of being rare or costly.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an acute insufficiency
• noun an insufficient quantity or number