Why food riots are likely to become the new normal

Wed Oct 16 01:09:25 BST 2013

http://www.projectcensored.org/15-food-riots-new-normal/
15. Food Riots: The New Normal?

Reduced land productivity, combined with elevated 
oil costs and population growth, threaten a 
systemic, global food crisis. Citing findings 
from a study by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, published 
by the Royal Society, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed 
identified the links among intensifying economic 
inequality, debt, climate change, and fossil fuel 
dependency to conclude that a global food crisis is now undeniable.
Global food prices have been consistently higher 
than in preceding decades, reported Ahmed, 
leading to dramatic price increases in staple 
foods and triggering food riots across the Middle 
East, North Africa, and South Asia. The crux of 
this global phenomenon is climate change: severe 
natural disasters including drought, flood, heat 
waves, and monsoons have affected major regional 
food baskets. By mid-century, Ahmed reported, 
world crop yields could fall as much as 2040 
percent because of climate change alone.
Industrial agricultural methods that disrupt soil 
have also contributed to impending food 
shortages. As a result, Ahmed reported, global 
land productivity has dropped significantly, 
from 2.1 percent during 195090 to 1.2 percent during 19902007.
By contrast with Ahmeds report, corporate media 
coverage of food insecurity has tended to treat 
it as a local and episodic problem. For example, 
an April 2008 story in the Los Angeles Times 
covered food riots in Haiti, which resulted in 
three deaths. Similarly, a March 2013 New York 
Times piece addressed how the loss of farmland 
and farm labor to urbanization contributed to 
rising food costs in China. Corporate media have 
not connected the dots to analyze how 
intensifying inequality, debt, climate change, 
and consumption of fossil fuels have contributed 
to the potential for a global food crisis in the near future.
Censored #15
Food Riots: The New Normal

Why food riots are likely to become the new normal

http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=165795#165795
The link between intensifying inequality, debt, 
climate change, fossil fuel dependency and the global food crisis is undeniable
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/food-riots-new-normal

Riot police guard a supermarket attacked by food 
rioters in San Fernando, Buenos Aires. 
Photograph: Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images

Just over two years since Egypt's dictator 
President Hosni Mubarak resigned , little has 
changed. Cairo's infamous 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.channel4.com/news/egypt-what-has-changed-for-tahrir-squares-protesters>Tahrir 
Square has remained a continual site of clashes 
between demonstrators and 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/03/03/police-break-up-tahrir-sit-in-arrest-dozens/>security 
forces, despite a newly elected president. It's 
the same story in 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://news.yahoo.com/tunisian-secularists-protest-against-islamist-pm-170933771.html>Tunisia, 
and 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://news.yahoo.com/libya-gas-exports-italy-halted-militias-clash-095419884.html>Libya 
where 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/02/10/One-dead-in-Tunisian-protests/UPI-14511360511269/?spt=hs&or=tn>protests 
and 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/uk-libya-protest-idUKBRE91O0YB20130225>civil 
unrest have persisted under now ostensibly democratic governments.

The problem is that the political changes brought 
about by the Arab spring were largely cosmetic. 
Scratch beneath the surface, and one finds the 
same deadly combination of environmental, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/energy>energy 
and economic crises.

We now know that the 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/aug/25/food-price-arab-middle-east-protests>fundamental 
triggers for the Arab spring were unprecedented 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/food>food 
price rises. The first sign things were 
unravelling hit in 2008, when 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/06/food.foodanddrink>a 
global rice shortage coincided with dramatic 
increases in staple food prices, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://articles.cnn.com/2008-04-14/world/world.food.crisis_1_food-aid-food-prices-rice-prices?_s=PM:WORLD>triggering 
food riots across the middle east, north Africa 
and south Asia. A month before the fall of the 
Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the UN's Food and 
Agriculture Organisation 
(FAO)<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12119539>reported 
record high food prices for dairy, meat, sugar and cereals.

Since 2008, global food prices have been 
consistently higher than in preceding decades, 
despite wild fluctuations. This year, even with 
prices stabilising, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/>the 
food price index remains at 210  which some 
experts believe is the threshold beyond which 
civil unrest 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://necsi.edu/research/social/food_crises.pdf>becomes 
probable. The FAO warns that 2013 could see 
prices increase later owing to tight grain stocks 
from 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-food-fao-idUSBRE9160A220130207>last 
year's adverse crop weather.

Whether or not those prices materialise this 
year, food price volatility is only a symptom of 
deeper systemic problems  namely, that the 
global industrial food system is increasingly 
unsustainable. Last year, the world produced 
2,241m tonnes of grain, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C54/grain_2013>down 
75m tonnes or 3% from the 2011 record harvest.

The key issue, of course, is 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-change>climate 
change. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in 
key food-basket regions have already led to 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10918591>a 
10-20% drop in rice yields over the past decade. 
Last year, four-fifths of the US experienced a 
heatwave, there were prolonged droughts in Russia 
and Africa, a lighter monsoon in India and floods 
in Pakistan  
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://uk.news.yahoo.com/study-links-extreme-weather-climate-change-002740716.html>extreme 
weather events that were likely linked to climate 
change afflicting the world's major food basket regions.

The US Department of Agriculture 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings.aspx>predicts 
a 3-4% food price rise this year  
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CGUQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuk.finance.yahoo.com%2Fnews%2Ffood-price-inflation-increase-waitrose-170903212.html&ei=spU0Uc2fJtOR0QW11oH4Dg&usg=AFQjCNG1KmglWPxtxbZ7Ss3wBvjiQURBBQ&bv>a 
warning that is seconded in the UK. Make no 
mistake: on a business-as-usual scenario, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/20120905-ib-extreme-weather-extreme-prices-en.pdf>this 
is the new normal. Overall, global grain 
consumption 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C54/grain_2013>has 
exceeded production in eight of the past 13 
years. By mid-century, world crop yields could 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008604722_webwarming09m.html>fall 
as much as 20-40% because of climate change alone.

But climate is not the only problem. Industrial 
farming methods 
are<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://newint.org/features/2008/12/01/soil-depletion/>breaching 
the biophysical limits of the soil. World 
agricultural land productivity between 1990 and 
2007 was 1.2% a year, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm>nearly 
halfcompared with 1950-90 levels of 2.1%.

2008 also saw a shift to a new era of volatile, 
but consistently higher, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/oil>oilprices. 
Regardless of where one stands on 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://mondediplo.com/2013/03/09gaz>the 
prospects for unconventional oil and gas for 
ameliorating "peak oil", the truth is that 
we<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9500667/Peak-cheap-oil-is-an-incontrovertible-fact.html>will 
never return to the heyday of cheap petroleum.

<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/oil-prices-a-major-threat-to-europe-s-economy-iea-s-birol-says.html>High 
oil prices will continue to debilitate the global 
economy, particularly in Europe  but they will 
also continue to feed into the oil-dependent 
industrial food system. Currently, every major 
point in industrial food production 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS00-04.pdf>is 
heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To make 
matters 
worse,<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-bankers-get-rich-betting-on-food-prices-as-millions-starve-8459207.html>predatory 
speculation on food and other commodities by 
banks drives prices higher, increasing profits at 
the expense of millions of the world's poor.

In the context of economies wracked by debt, this 
creates a perfect storm of problems which will 
guarantee high prices  eventually triggering 
civil unrest  for the foreseeable future.

It's only a matter of time before this fatal 
cocktail of climate, energy and economic 
challenges 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/articleview/ArticleID/21806/language/en-US/Default.aspx>hits 
the Gulf kingdoms  where Saudi Arabia is 
struggling with an average total oil depletion 
rate 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://www.mining.com/web/peak-oil-impacting-norwegian-and-saudi-2013-production/>of 
about 29%. If oil revenues reduce in coming 
years, this would lower subsidies for food and 
fuel. We've already seen how this can play out, 
for instance, in Egypt, whose 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://mondediplo.com/blogs/tunisia-egypt-and-the-protracted-collapse-of-the>domestic 
oil production peaked back in 1996, reducing 
government spending on services amid mounting debt.

The link between intensifying inequality, debt, 
climate change, fossil fuel dependency and the 
global food crisis is now undeniable. As 
population and industrial growth continue, the 
food crisis will only get worse. If we don't do 
something about it, according to an astounding 
new Royal Society paper, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.full>we 
may face the prospect of civilisational collapse within this century.

The Arab spring is merely a taste of things to come.

 Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes at 
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/http://nafeez.blogspot.co.uk/>The 
Cutting Edge
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