Social unrest may reflect a variety of factors such as poverty, unemployment, and social injustice.Despite the many possible contributing factors, the timing of violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 as well as earlier riots in 2008 coincides with large peaks in global food prices. We identify a specific food price threshold above which protests become likely. These observations suggest that protests may reflect not only long-standing political failings of governments, but also the sudden desperate straits of vulnerable populations. If food prices remain high, there is likely to be persistent and increasing global social disruption. Underlying the food price peaks we also find an ongoing trend of increasing prices. We extrapolate these trends and identify a crossing point to the domain of high impacts, even without price peaks, in 2012-2013. This implies that avoiding global food crises and associated social unrest requires rapid and concerted action.

Increases in global food prices have led to widespread hunger and social unrest-and an imperative to understand their causes. In a previous paper published in September 2011, we constructed for the first time a dynamic model that quantitatively agreed with food prices. Specifically, the model fit the FAO Food Price Index time series from January 2004 to March 2011, inclusive. The results showed that the dominant causes of price increases during this period were investor speculation and ethanol conversion. The model included investor trend following as well as shifting

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Recent increases in basic food prices are severely affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. Proposed causes such as shortages of grain due to adverse weather, increasing meat consumption in China and India, conversion of corn to ethanol in the United States, and investor speculation on commodity markets lead to widely differing implications for policy. A lack of clarity about which factors are responsible reinforces policy inaction. Here, for the first time to our knowledge, we construct a dynamic model that quantitatively agrees with food prices. The results show that the dominant causes of price increases are investor speculation and ethanol conversion. Models that just treat supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics. The two sharp peaks in 2007/2008 and 2010/2011 are specifically due to investor speculation, whereas an underlying upward trend is due to increasing demand from ethanol conversion. The model includes investor trend following as well as shifting between commodities, equities, and bonds to take advantage of increased expected returns. Claims that speculators cannot influence grain prices are shown to be invalid by direct analysis of price-setting practices of granaries. Both causes of price increase, speculative investment and ethanol conversion, are promoted by recent regulatory changes-deregulation of the commodity markets, and policies promoting the conversion of corn to ethanol. Rapid action is needed to reduce the impacts of the price increases on global hunger.behavioral economics | agricultural commodities | food prices | nonequilibrium markets | global crisis I n 2007 and early 2008 the prices of grain, including wheat, corn, and rice, rose by over 100%, then fell back to prior levels by late 2008. A similar rapid increase occurred again in the fall of 2010. These dramatic price changes (1) have resulted in severe impacts on vulnerable populations worldwide and prompted analyses of their causes (2-57). Among the causes discussed are (i) weather, particularly droughts in Australia, (ii) increasing demand for meat in the developing world, especially in China and India, (iii) biofuels, especially corn ethanol in the United States and biodiesel in Europe, (iv) speculation by investors seeking financial gain on the commodities markets, (v) currency exchange rates, and (vi) linkage between oil and food prices. Many conceptual characterizations and qualitative discussions of the causes suggest that multiple factors are important. However, quantitative analysis is necessary to determine which factors are actually important. Although various efforts have been made, no analysis thus far has provided a direct description of the price dynamics. Here we provide a quantitative model of price dynamics demonstrating that only two factors are central: speculators and corn ethanol. We introduce and analyze a model of speculators describing bubbles and crashes. We further show that the increase in corn-to-ethanol conversion can account for the underlying price trends when we excl...

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