

12 Sep

By Brian Merchant / Motherboard




Pretty simple. Black dots are the food prices, red lines are the riots. In other words, whenever the UN’s food price index, which measures the monthly change in the price of a basket of food commodities, climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the world. CSI doesn’t claim that any breach of 210 immediately leads to riots, obviously; just that the probability that riots will erupt grows much greater. For billions of people around the world, food comprises up to 80% of routine expenses (for rich-world people like you and I, it’s like 15%). When prices jump, people can’t afford anything else; or even food itself. And if you can’t eat—or worse, your family can’t eat—you fight.




Yet the cost of food hasn’t quite yet risen to the catastrophic levels reached last year. Around the time of the riots cum-revolutions, we saw the food price index soar through 220 points and even push 240. This year, we’ve pretty consistently hovered in the 210-216 range—right along the cusp of danger. But CSI expects a perilous trend in rising food prices to continue. Even before the extreme weather scrambled food prices this year, their 2011 report predicted that the next great breach would occur in August 2013, and that the risk of more worldwide rioting would follow. So, if trends hold, these complex systems theorists say we’re less than one year and counting from a fireball of global unrest.



This all goes to say that as long as climate change continues to advance—it seems that nothing can stop that now—and we maintain a global food system perennially subject to volatile price spikes and exploitation from speculators, without reform, our world will be an increasingly restive one. Hunger is coming, and so are the riots.

5 Responses to “We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say”

  1. Coyopa September 13, 2012 at 7:44 am #

    Reblogged this on Coyopa and commented:
    A graph you need to see concerning the connection between riots and food prices, some vital information that you should know, and why that means we’re about one year away from global food riots…

  2. Conran September 17, 2012 at 6:30 am #

    Surely it depends on the definition of “riot”. When does an angry mob become a riot? I’ve seen numerous people (specifically in the USA and our western governments) making arbitrary statements about when a protest or movement is a “riot”, and IMO, a lot of the time it is inaccurate to describe them as such.
    There is also the evidence that the sense of injustice is what ultimately turns people from a protest to a riot, so how have they factored that into their analysis? For instance, a riot is seemingly often triggered by the violent response to a protest, with police or military perpetrating an unjustified act against protesters who were otherwise peaceful.

    I agree with their findings that it is certainly going to get a lot worse, and that food prices are going to trigger a lot of protests, but we have seen isolated instances of rising food prices in some nations for decades, and that hasn’t always led to riots across those countries. A perfect example is Zimbabwe. If the price of food were the primary driver then surely Zimbabwe should have been in a state of perpetual civil war for several years?

    I think there are a lot of factors, and while food cost is one, the response of authorities to a protest is perhaps the biggest determining factor. And as our nations are preparing for massive civil unrest (the USA and UK are increasing internet monitoring of social networks, militarising police, enacting new crowd control measures, restricting protest space, monitoring unions etc) I think it’s more pertinent to look at how our nations plan to respond to protest in the future.

    Last year I decided that the moment my government puts live ammunition on the streets in response to something, it’s time to prepare. That’s the trigger point for me. With deadly force in the hands of so many, a mistake or misjudgement becomes more likely than not, and the response to a harsh police response like that against a protest will have the power to turn it into a national uprising.

  3. Sheila September 17, 2012 at 10:32 am #

    I agree with most of this but I don’t think it will take a year to happen. If the dollar collapses before the end of the year ( what most non MSM pundants think) there will be riots in a few hours of that event.


  4. Nick11766 (@Nick11766) September 17, 2012 at 1:30 pm #

    Riots courtesy of paper money, yet another violation of our rights. The gov’t constantly violates our rights.
    They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars.
    Impeach Obama, support Ron Paul.

  5. steve September 17, 2012 at 4:14 pm #


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