Posted on 02/24/2014 10:13:24 PM PST by JerseyanExile
It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.
Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.
Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. Four days before Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation helped ignite the revolution that would spread across the region, NECSI submitted a government report that highlighted the risk that rising food prices posed to global stability. Now, the model has once again proven prescient—2013 saw the third-highest food prices on record, and that's when the seeds for the conflicts across the world were sown.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
Point of order. King Canute did not attempt to command the ocean tides out of arrogance. His display was to show that a King had no power against the glory and power of God.
I don’t think food prices are the cause, just the effect. That doesn’t mean watching food prices isn’t helpful, they are, it just means we need to look at the triggers of rising food prices.
Perhaps. They are going to need something. They are probably one bad dry season away from starvation and thirst.
You can lay this out on top of the world price of oil and it looks exactly the same. Food production depends on energy. More in some places and less in other places.
Droughts and floods also come into play. The 2010 spike on the graph was caused by the Russian drought and Putin stopping wheat exports.
Some nations have a lot of sustenance farming or labor intensive farming and they have chronic output problems that are made worse by having to import grains.
At the CIA world Factbook, under the economic section, a(all) nations labor supply is characterized and those nations in which a high proportion of the labor supply is in farming, will always have ag output problems. Mexico has been trying to privatize their huge system of ag collectives(Ejidos) since they signed NAFTA.
In the US, only a very small percentage work in ag but we have a lot of part time farmers with regular jobs.
Today there are 7 billion, 9 billion in 2050, and 11 billion in 2100.
Give me an order of those grasshoppers sauteed in garlic butter
“Never thought of this as a trigger.”
It might be the trigger, but a lot of other poor economic and political decisions loaded the gun. When government corruption and policies create the situation where the people can’t afford, or even find, food, then logically, the gun will go off.
I’m sure that there are other correlations that fit just as well.
Excellent correlation: Food to energy. Energy can be linked to primarily politics.
Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.That's rich -- the 2008 economic collapse. IOW, it's Bush's fault? No wait -- it's gotta be corn ethanol! /s
The problem for us may become a shorter growing season; to wet/ waiting for thaw before planting and early rains/ freezing conditions at harvest. There are alternative varieties for a shorter growing season, but the yields are much lower.
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