deficiency vs famine

deficiency and famine both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
deficiency	Yes	No	No	No
famine	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, famine is a hyponym of deficiency; that is, famine is a word with a more specific, narrower meaning than deficiency:

Other hyponyms of deficiency include absence, dearth, shortage, deficit, mineral deficiency, shortness, stringency, tightness.

deficiency (noun)	famine (noun)
lack of an adequate quantity or number	a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable	an acute insufficiency