Over the same period, certain other factorsâfor example, higher energy costsâhad a greater effect on food prices than did the use of ethanol as a motor fuel.â. Congressional Budget Office, The Impact of Ethanol Use on Food Prices and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, April 2009.
Thousands of innocent Jews, who had also suffered from the plague, were slaughtered in dozens of European communities. Social and Economic Effects of the Black Death. Some social changes caused by the Black Death were positive. Before the plague, peasant serfs were confined to their lord's estate and received little or no payment for their work. Overpopulation and shortage of resources led to malnutrition and extreme poverty for many peasants.
Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people. In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage.Early in the 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.) However, they were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death.