The term “food riot” has a particularly eerie ring. We can imagine a lot of end-times scenarios and we do, because we enjoy it. Us, here in the United States or whatever other first-world nation you’re reading from (we’re big in Australia, I hear), can do this and have our fun with end-times fantasies because it’s not quite real. But, food riots are different, calling to mind something much more present – and desperate and unpoetic and ugly. And maybe even a bit implicating. After all, we’’re privileged enough to not just fine tune our diets, but write diet fiction.Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute have, in a recent analysis, identified food as the sole common factor in recent large-scale riots. It’s a simple plot of the change in food prices against riots, whatever their more explicit cause may be. Looking at the graph below, it’s easy to identify a threshold at which things go to hell.MIT’s Technology Review notes: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.It’s important also to point out that it shouldn’t be taken as a direct cause and effect. Instead, it’s food prices that allow the conditions in which riots flourish. Food prices don’t necessarily pull the trigger; they’re a “precipitating condition,” as the Institute’s paper explains. Makes sense.This is a pretty limited timespan and we’re only dealing with two riot/food spikes. You could argue that it’s a bit of a leap to say that at the next spike, at this determined threshold, riots with ensue again. But is it? The authors argue that things are different now than they ever have been.From the paper:Historically, there are ample examples of food riots," with consequent challenges to authority and political change, notably in the food riots and social instability across Europe in 1848, which followed widespread droughts. While many other causes of social unrest have been identi ed, food scarcity or high prices often underlie riots, unrest and revolutions]. Today, many poor countries rely on the global food supply system and are thus sensitive to global food prices. This condition is quite di erent from the historical prevalence of subsistence farming in undeveloped countries, or even a reliance on local food supplies that could provide a bu er against global food supply conditions. It is an example of the increasingly central role that global interdependence is playing in human survival and well-being. We can understand the appearance of social unrest in 2011 based upon a hypothesis that widespread unrest does not arise from long-standing political failings of the system, but rather from its sudden perceived failure to provide essential security to the population. In food importing countries with widespread poverty, political organizations maybe perceived to have a critical role in food security. Failure to provide security undermines the very reason for existence of the political system. Once this occurs, the resulting protests can reflect the wide range of reasons for dissatisfaction, broadening the scope of the protest, and masking the immediate trigger of the unrest.Notice on the graph two dashed lines representing the general trends of food prices in the world. And notice that they both reach the threshold between 2012 and 2013, Aug. 2013 at the latest. This would appear to be the point of no return, when the general trend, not just spikes in the general trend, reach this point where the planet turns into a riot tinderbox. Of course, it really shouldn’t take the threat of global unrest to keep food affordable for the world’s population. And hopefully, it won’t take more than the threat.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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