Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on November 9, 2012
The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food
If we don’t reverse the current trend in food prices, we’ve got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists
What causes riots? That’s not a question you would expect to have a simple answer.
But today, Marco Lagi and buddies at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, say they’ve found a single factor that seems to trigger riots around the world.
This single factor is the price of food. Lagi and co say that when it rises above a certain threshold, social unrest sweeps the planet.
The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause. Both these sources are plotted on the same graph above.
This clearly seems to show that when the food price index rises above a certain threshold, the result is trouble around the world.
This isn’t rocket science. It stands to reason that people become desperate when food is unobtainable. It’s often said that any society is three square meals from anarchy.
But what’s interesting about this analysis is that Lagi and co say that high food prices don’t necessarily trigger riots themselves, they simply create the conditions in which social unrest can flourish. “These observations are consistent with a hypothesis that high global food prices are a precipitating condition for social unrest,” say Lagi and co.
In other words, high food prices lead to a kind of tipping point when almost anything can trigger a riot, like a lighted match in a dry forest.
On 13 December last year, the group wrote to the US government pointing out that global food prices were about to cross the threshold they had identified. Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in protest at government policies, an event that triggered a wave of social unrest that continues to spread throughout the middle east today.
That leads to an obvious thought. If high food prices condition the world for social unrest, then reducing the prices should stabilise the planet.
But what can be done to reverse the increases. Lagi and co say that two main factors have driven the increase in the food price index. The first is traders speculating on the price of food, a problem that has been exacerbated in recent years by the deregulation of the commodities markets and the removal of trading limits for buyers and sellers.
The second is the conversion of corn into ethanol, a practice directly encouraged by subsidies.
Those are both factors that the western world and the US in particular could change.
Today, the food price index remains above the threshold but the long term trend is still below. But it is rising. Lagi and co say that if the trend continues, the index is likely to cross the threshold in August 2013.
If their model has the predictive power they suggest, when that happens, the world will become a tinderbox waiting for a match.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1108.2455: The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East
7 Comments on "The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food"
sparky on Fri, 9th Nov 2012 12:49 pm
.
Pretty much stating the obvious !
there is an Indian who got the Nobel prize for explaining famine economic dymamics
the lasalle minimum is the quantity of food one need to turn up to work the day after .
in a famine situation , the poor cannot buy enough food to stay alive , either because the prices were very high but very often because they have no money to purchase it
It cull the population from its poorest
and its less healthy
many government have food subsidies programs not least the U.S. with its food stamps program
Its not charity , it’s cheaper than an army of cops
the problem is that those food programs are increasingly costly and the yearly carryover margin , the “famine index” is getting under severe pressure
TIKIMAN on Fri, 9th Nov 2012 12:56 pm
You mean social unrest in dune coon areas. People in the US, mostly Obama supporters will always have their EBT cards to buy food and booze with my tax money. These people are the scum of the country.
Kenz300 on Fri, 9th Nov 2012 5:12 pm
Every year the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed…..
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
Endless population growth is not sustainable and makes every problem from the food crisis, the water crisis, the fish stocks crisis, the climate change crisis, the financial crisis and the jobs crisis all harder to solve.
Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.
GregT on Fri, 9th Nov 2012 6:09 pm
The crises that we face are the earth’s way of solving it’s parasitic human overpopulation problem.
BillT on Sat, 10th Nov 2012 1:19 am
Famine and disease are going to correct the problems of population. Yes, even the us will feel the pain this time. We import 30% of our food already, and the constantly higher prices are already cutting into the family budget. 47 million on food stamps will double in the years to come and then the street wars begin.
Arthur on Sat, 10th Nov 2012 10:25 am
If I were an imaginary person without a past, heritage and tribal identity, US ‘fly-over country’ would be high on my list of potential places to be to ‘enjoy’ the end of the oil age. Small town of 10,000 ‘compatible people’, not too high up north so not too cold, with enough water and fertile land… hmm… Libertarians always worship Costa Rica, South-America, Switserland, Malaysia… not convinced about that.
BillT on Sat, 10th Nov 2012 10:55 am
TIKI, your ‘scum’ are mostly whites.
“…Most people who depend on welfare are White and live in suburbs or rural
areas, a recent study shows. The findings are contrary to the popular
belief that most welfare recipients are unemployed, inner-city minorities whose families have gotten public assistance for generations.”
Likewise, you will find that the majority of food stamp users are in Red states.