Anyone who actually manages food in a region besides a rural region would disagree with you to a large degree. Drought would just cause any conflict to end and people would give up playing. The same goes for not allowing new characters on the island.
I think too many people are focusing solely on the roleplaying aspect when this is in fact a roleplaying strategy game, where fighting using game mechanics makes up a huge amount of the gameplay for many people (including me, as I hardly send out 'proper' roleplays). Denuding the ability of an island to gain additional characters while still leaving it open just leaves it in a drought of a different sort, that of players.
If looting starving regions for food still allowed for the robbing of food (directly from the wealthy locals that aren't starving to death instead of the empty granaries), essentially allowing war to create food, it might serve as an incentive for realms to go to war to feed themselves. Though it's true that most of the time, when starving, one's reflex is to turn into a courtier and try to ease the stat drops rather than to march far away for a handful of bushels.
