Where Will The Food Riots Start?
Global food prices have never risen so fast and have never been so high, and as have detailed multiple times in recent months (as this is not simply a one-month, ‘blame it on Putin’ crisis), most recently here, the pieces are in place for some serious tears to form in the social fabric of many nations.
While food prices may be generally seen as an emerging market problem, they will have an effect on developed markets too, something we will see in the upcoming French election.
And as the following table from Bloomberg Economics shows, while Pakistan is already in the midst of a political crisis and Egypt is already coming under financial pressure (along with Peru and Sri Lanka), the surge in food prices is also adding to problems in the developed world.
Nigeria, India, Colombia, Philippines, and Turkey all bear watching, along with Russia…
In fact, as PeakProsperity’s Chris Martenson details below, the inflation riots have begun. Peru and Sri Lanka both are experiencing violence as inflation spirals the prices of basic necessities higher and higher.
We’ve been here before, and recently.
The Arab Spring was a period of social unrest and riots in 2010 and 2011 that was triggered, in part, by spiking food costs.
As Alfred Henry Lewis said in 1906, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”
But before pure anarchy comes, society experiences increasing unrest and the erosion of social bonds and niceties. That’s where we are now.
Food prices today are higher than they were in 2010, so the protests are not at all surprising. We can and should expect more of them.
Worse than that, however, is the prospect of actual famine and food shortages.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
