If you understand the causes of political upheaval, you know it is high time to take food prices seriously as a security issue

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By "Bushel N.A. Peck"

Best Defense guest respondent

It's been little reported that the unrest in Tunisia which
helped trigger the first "Arab Spring" protests had a lot to do with
spiking food prices that were rapidly eroding peoples' disposable income.

Have you seen this report?

Bar-Yam, et al came up with a quantitative model that seems to predict global
food prices and knock-on social effects. He places blame primarily on
speculation and redirection of food crops to ethanol production.

"The food price bubble of 2011 caused widespread hunger and helped trigger
the Arab spring. In 2013 we expect prices to be even higher and may lead to
major social disruptions," said Professor Bar-Yam President of NECSI, who
has just returned from Davos where he presented his findings on speculation in
global commodity markets. His paper, "The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model
of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion," was called by
Wired magazine one of the top 10
discoveries in science of 2011.

It seems to me the globalized financial industry (which really should be called
the financialization cartel) has figured out how to engineer speculative
bubbles. First they did it in the 90's with the tech bubble. When that popped,
it caused a moderate north America recession. Then they stepped up to the
real estate market, and when that bubble popped it caused a massive U.S. and
European recession. Now they've moved on to inflating a global agricultural
bubble. Try to imagine what happens when that pops? Third time should be
charming.