Feeding Unrest: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Food Prices and Sociopolitical Conflict

Dec 8, 2014 | New Security Beat
View Original

From the Roman poet Juvenal’s observations about bread and circuses to Marie Antoinette’s proclamation, “let them eat cake!” the link between food and political stability is well established in pop culture. In academic and policy circles, however, it’s a source of considerable debate.

Since 2008, when the FAO Food Price Index spiked to previously unseen levels, reports of so-called “food riots” have become common. In 2011, researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) released a short paper presenting a compelling correlation between spikes in the FAO Food Price Index in 2008 (and again in 2011) and media reports of food riots across the Middle East and North Africa. The authors claimed that when political systems fail to provide accessible food, populations have “nothing to lose” and “any incident then triggers death-defying protests and other actions that disrupt the existing order.”