The 2030 food riots

We have discussed food issues here often enough.  A new chart coming out of MIT is making the rounds showing that food pricing is set to start another mega-riot by 2030.

From the Abstract

 

The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East (pdf)

Marco Lagi, Karla Z. Bertrand and Yaneer Bar-Yam, New England Complex Systems Institute

10 August 2011 (hat tip: Mother Board via NC)

 

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.



From here (pdf)

 

To my mind 2030 is an awful long way off to be making pricing predictions.  If there is one pricing item that seems to be sensitive to the flapping of butterfly wings in Bolivia, it is food prices.

 

It also ignores that the countries that have been having the big riots have both youth bulges, and education bulges.  So in effect you have uplifted your youth to the status of dangerous revolutionaries, rather than leaving them in the more usual state of desperate peasants.