The price of food internationally has risen 4 percent between January and April 2014. This marks the first increase in food prices since August 2012 — the historical peak for food prices. Though the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization projects the second largest cereal harvest for 2014/2015, the world’s grain production is expected to drop by 2.4 percent from 2013, with corn accounting for most of the loss.
In areas where access to food production is already compromised — such as the Black Sea region, where the ongoing Ukraine situation has interfered with farming — the shrinking food supply and the spiking cost of food are triggering an increase in violence and rioting.
According to the newly-released May 2014 edition of the World Bank’s Food Price Watch, “Food price shocks can be responsible for the origination and continuation of conflict and, more generally, political instability. Increasing empirical evidence shows that international food prices and the domestic pass through to local markets of these international prices has a significant role in all types of conflict, from interstate wars to civil wars, regime breakdowns, and communal violence.”
The World Bank reports that in 51 riots in 37 countries over the last eight years, food was the principal consideration. In the February 2008 food riot in Cameroon, for example, between 24 and 100 individuals were killed and 1,671 were arrested in riots that reportedly paralyzed the capital. The riot was triggered by frustrations over rising food and fuel costs. In Buenos Aires in 2012, teenagers ransacked and robbed working-class neighborhood grocery stores in rioting that left 22 dead and more than 200 injured. In 2009, 20 people were trampled to death in a food riot in Pakistan.
As climate change, the expanding world population, and issues with water quality and access continue to influence crop yields and demand, it is estimated that the frequency of these riots will increase. While food access is rarely the sole cause for instability, it can be a catalyst when combined with other factors such as ethnic tensions and corruption. Typically, a well-fed population is willing to put up with more frustrations and injustices than a starving one.
An example of this can be seen in Venezuela. An ongoing series of protests have torn the country apart since former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear died during a roadside robbery in January. The poor government response to this and to protests by university students condemning the rash of crime that led to the attempted rape of a university student in San Cristobal have led to sweeping protests across the nation. The protests were fueled by the expanding rate of inflation in the Venezuela — among the highest in the world — critical shortages of basic goods and a failure on the part of the government to cope with escalating levels of violence.
The rioting has led to 42 deaths, up to 5,285 injuries and more than 3,100 arrestees.
As the cost of food increases, it can be expected that incidents of violence will increase globally. Ukraine, which is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and a key component of Europe’s food portfolio, saw a 73 percent increase in domestic wheat production costs. This is partly due to the state of heightened hostilities that have centered around the Euromaidan protests — which saw the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych — and a build-up of Russian forces on the Eastern Ukrainian border following the seizing of Crimea. Likewise, Argentina saw wheat prices increase by 70 percent.
Food riots are not limited to struggling economies. Yaneer Bar-Yam, an analyst with New England Complex Systems Institute, compiled a list of nations likely to see food riots based on the FAO food price index. This list includes countries such as Brazil, Sweden and Chile — nations that all have booming or healthy economies. A growing sense of economic inequality among a nation’s citizens has the potential to spark hostilities as much as war and government corruption. Issues such as the growing ethanol mandate may make formerly affordable foods unavailable to poorer populations due to price increases in cereals and sugar. In the United States, for example, 40 percent of the corn crop is used for ethanol production.
While domestic prices have been within usual fluctuations, concerns over the expanding drought in the U.S. and shifting weather patterns present the potential for crop failure in the U.S. Cutbacks in support of the “social safety net,” including the failure to expand emergency unemployment insurance compensation to the chronically unemployed and cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, have led some to believe that a food riot in the U.S. is theoretically possible, if not likely.
However, as the U.S. is the world leader in food production, by the time the U.S. would actually start to experience food riots, presumably, the rest of the world would have been starving for a long time.
“Of course, in the long term, a world where an increasing number of people are facing foodless days and an increasing number of countries are facing food-driven instability could be dangerous for everyone,” wrote Joshua Keating on the issue for Slate.