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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Pull Up the Drawbridge, Stockpile Now

Pull Up the Drawbridge, Stockpile Now

by Anne Laurie|  August 24, 20118:23 pm| 34 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Food, Science & Technology

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You don’t have to watch squirrels’ acorn-gathering efforts or measure wooly-bear caterpillar bands to predict an ongoing cranky, isolationist, get-away-from-MY-stuff season:

Consumers can expect to see a jump in prices for pasta, meat, vegetable oil and many other grocery items in the coming months as a pair of new government reports forecast on [Aug. 11] that a brutal mixture of heat, drought or flooding has taken a toll on the corn, soybeans and wheat grown on American farms.
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Futures prices for those important crops jumped on [Aug. 11], and commodities experts said that would lead to higher prices for manufacturers and consumers.
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“The message, based on today’s report, is these higher costs should not be expected to abate any time soon,” said Bill G. Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a commodity consulting firm that works with restaurant companies and food manufacturers. “It implies higher cost forthcoming and subsequent margin pressure, and at some point the need to increase prices at the retail level or on the menus.” …

The geeks at Wired chip in to explain how “Food Prices Could Hit Tipping Point for Global Unrest“:

“When you have food prices peak, you have all these riots. But look under the peaks, at the background trend. That’s increasing quite rapidly, too,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. “In one to two years, the background trend runs into the place where all hell breaks loose.”…
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The researchers are hardly the first to portray food problems as a spark that inflames social inequality and stokes individual desperation, unleashing and amplifying impulses of rebellion. The role of food prices in triggering the Arab Spring has been widely described. Their innovation is a pair of price points on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index: about 215 in current prices, or 190 when corrected for inflation.
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It’s at those points where, on a graph of food prices and social unrest between 2004 and 2011, unrest breaks out. But whereas they were crossed by price jumps in 2008, Bar-Yam and colleagues calculate that the underlying, steady trend — driven primarily by commodity speculation, agricultural crop-to-fuel conversion and rising prices of fertilizer and oil — crosses those points between 2012 and 2013.
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“Once we get there, the peaks aren’t the problem anymore. Instead it’s the trend. And that’s harder to correct,” said Bar-Yam. At that point, widespread political unrest and instability can be expected, even in countries less troubled than those in North Africa and the Middle East.
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“When the ability of the political system to provide security for the population breaks down, popular support disappears. Conditions of widespread threat to security are particularly present when food is inaccessible to the population at large,” write Bar-Yam and colleagues in arXiv. “All support for the system and allowance for its failings are lost. The loss of support occurs even if the political system is not directly responsible for the food security failure, as is the case if the primary responsibility lies in the global food supply system.”

And now Slate reports on further research suggesting that the food shortage / global conflict situation is only gonna get worse:

The authors (who include eminent oceanographer Mark Cane, the first person to successfully forecast El Niño through numerical modeling) classify El Niño months based on equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures, with extended periods of warming as the indicator of El Niño’s arrival. Unusually cool surface temperatures indicate the onset of La Niña, El Niño’s kinder, wetter mirror image. Using data on armed conflicts during 1950-2004 compiled by Swedish and Norwegian researchers, they compare the likelihood that conflicts flare up during El Niño versus La Niña years. (The researchers use a standard measure of conflict onset, defined as a new civil dispute that breaks out between the government and an organized adversary, resulting in at least 25 battle-related deaths in that year.)
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In regions affected by El Niño fluctuations the authors find a doubling of conflict risk during El Niño as compared to La Niña. El Niño is a relatively frequent event, occurring every four to seven years, and it affects fully half of the world’s population (including most of Latin American, South and Southeast Asia, and all of Sub-Saharan Africa). Given this high frequency and wide-ranging impact, the paper’s findings suggest that El Niño has had a hand in triggering as much as 21 percent of recent conflicts worldwide. In a “placebo” set of countries relatively removed from El Niño’s influence—including most of North Africa, the Middle East, and northern parts of Asia—conflict risk is the same during both El Niño and La Niña periods, bolstering the claim that weather is indeed behind their results. The authors also found that El Niño’s impact on conflict took place relatively soon after its arrival, and well before food shortages would have really set in. While they don’t speculate on the explanation for these patterns in the data, they are broadly consistent with the critical role that expectations of future hardship play in causing people to switch from agriculture to waging war.
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These findings are of grave concern, if you believe—as many climate scientists do—that climate change will produce global weather patterns that are more El Niño-like, with just as much year-to-year climate variability as exists today, but with warmer and drier conditions overall. While it would be premature to draw any conclusions, given the randomness in year-to-year appearances of El Niño and the extreme complexity of global climate systems, it does hint at one more reason to worry about a warming planet.

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Reader Interactions

34Comments

  1. 1.

    RandyH

    August 24, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    Can anyone explain what happened to the price of (real) butter a couple of months ago? It seems to have gone up about $1 per pound seemingly overnight. It wasn’t even gradual. Then it hasn’t come down since.

    It just seemed odd to me. Are more people eating butter? Is some industry using large amounts of milk fats (cream) that they used to not use?

  2. 2.

    scav

    August 24, 2011 at 8:34 pm

    @RandyH: Guns or Butter?

    Sorry, cheap joke. Not a clue here.

  3. 3.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    August 24, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    Supply and demand, dog, supply and demand.
    From the world wide internet:

    I have a relative that used to work in the dairy industry and he said recently that they are getting hit hard by the fact that so many people are switching over to soy based products instead of cows milk products. Many dairy farms are having to shut down or reduce their size as an effect and this all leads to dairy prices going up.

  4. 4.

    Samara Morgan

    August 24, 2011 at 8:38 pm

    its not just the weather, Anne Laurie.
    Its Peak Oil, the cost of fertilzers and farming.
    did you know the corn for one SUV tank of ethanol can feed a man for a year?

    those chickens are coming home to roost.
    America spent 11 trillion dollars since 2001 trying to “usher in” missionary democracy.
    We should have spent it on green energy and weather control.
    :)

  5. 5.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    August 24, 2011 at 8:38 pm

    so your saying i should buy gold and cache weapons?

    otoh since there isn’t much real food in our food, i don’t see how this affects us.

  6. 6.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    August 24, 2011 at 8:39 pm

    @Samara Morgan: You can’t look up a dead horses ass my old man always said.

  7. 7.

    Violet

    August 24, 2011 at 8:54 pm

    Seems like this might be relevant:

    Upper Income Confidence Plunging
    __
    The Gallup Economic Confidence index is at its lowest level since March 2009.
    __
    Key finding: “Confidence has fallen among Americans of all income levels, but plunged among upper-income Americans making $90,000 or more a year. Normally, upper-income Americans are more optimistic than their middle- and lower-income counterparts, however, this changed in the first weeks of August.”

    Even the upper income folks can see the peasants are getting restless.

  8. 8.

    Delia

    August 24, 2011 at 8:57 pm

    Food riots? We need our Beltway geniuses to prepare some very serious talking points about the need of the poor and the middle class to cut back on entitlements in food consumption. Everyone needs to make sacrifices, etc., and blah, blah, blah.

  9. 9.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 24, 2011 at 9:08 pm

    @Violet:

    Even the upper income folks can see the peasants are getting restless.

    Restless? This is so Last Days Of Rome. The unyielding shortsightedness of leadership (civic as well as corporate)and the insipid stupidity of the sheep are colliding head on.

    The body is dead, it just hasn’t had the temerity to lay down and fucking be dead yet.

    OTOH, when the snow birds get tired of rolling blackouts and water rationing along with the relentless heat and food shortages, maybe all those empty neighborhoods in the rust belt will repopulate.

  10. 10.

    Jager

    August 24, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    My good bro in law is a commodities marketing guy, does business world wide. (he recently did a deal to sell 16,000 head of American bred dairy cattle to South Korea) Lar has always said the goal of our food and commodity companies has been to increase the per centage of income spent on food by Americans. He is all about exporting; cattle, dairy and beef, consumables like beans, lentils, sun flowers, so called brush crops. He has clients in Asia, Africa, central Asia, the Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and recently Egypt, all buying American grown products and buying them with great enthusiasm!

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    August 24, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    I am going to do both: hope for the best, and overstock ye olde Campbell’s Soup in the pantry. A few cases of chicken noodle on hand – beats cashing in the entire investment portfolio and buying whatever gold coins Glenn Beck’s hawking this week.

  12. 12.

    WyldPirate

    August 24, 2011 at 9:14 pm

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred):

    I’m not one to defend matoko chan, raven, but she does have a point.

    A tanker of ethanol that went for corn meal instead would feed a a sinle person for a good while.

    And please don’t tell me YOU, of all people, think our gun point “diplomacy” in the Middle east and Afghanistan has been a “good thing” under Bush or Obama.

  13. 13.

    Delia

    August 24, 2011 at 9:20 pm

    @BruceFromOhio:

    This is so Last Days Of Rome.

    I hate to say it, but it’s not really last days of Rome, which went on for several hundred years on a downhill slide before the barbarians finally made it into town.

    It’s more like the last days of the Ancien Regime in France, say, autumn of 1788. Lots of food riots made worse by bad weather, high national debt, sticky foreign entanglements which haven’t worked out well, only the Third Estate pays taxes, aristocracy adamantly refuses to give up ancient privileges and start paying some taxes. Just waiting for 1789 and the spark. If Americans haven’t gone completely bananas already.

  14. 14.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    August 24, 2011 at 9:24 pm

    @WyldPirate: My point was about the “should have”. We didn’t.

  15. 15.

    Karen

    August 24, 2011 at 9:35 pm

    @RandyH:
    It might be the cows that farmers are selling because the grain they’d be growing to feed the cows are is going straight to China.

  16. 16.

    beltane

    August 24, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    The price of chicken feed has shot up in the past few weeks. Unfortunately, the cost of producing your own food tends to exactly track the cost of purchasing commercially produced food. Until our society develops a taste for the proverbial fat cats, there will be no relief in sight.

  17. 17.

    beltane

    August 24, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    @Delia: Yes, I can’t wait to be lectured by some nicely embalmed, surgically enhanced media mannequin about how poor Americans are too fat and should only be eating every other day.

  18. 18.

    Linda Featheringill

    August 24, 2011 at 9:43 pm

    @Karen:

    Grain and selling cows:

    The drought in the US Southwest has severely diminished grain crops in the area and caused a lot of farmers to sell off many of their animals.

    Connected to climate change? Maybe.

  19. 19.

    S. cerevisiae

    August 24, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    But but but – alogore is fat! Climate change is a hoax! Oil prices are caused by speculators and not supply! /wingnut.

    I am going to invest in the Soylent corporation. I think they have a great plan to provide us with cheap and nutritious food. They are even claiming to be a “green” corporation.

  20. 20.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 24, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    @Delia:

    If Americans haven’t gone completely bananas already.

    You’ll know it’s here when the teahdists torch the Smithsonian because Preznit Bachmann said on Faux News that Jeebus said that knowledge is power, and power is evil. Or something.

    Instead of such things bringing down Rupert & Co., it’ll tear the rest of us to shreds as planned. Not quite the convocation of the Estates-General, but when the end is truly fucking nigh, the nuances are kind of irrelevant.

    And on that happy note, time to drop the storms and bring in the lawn furniture, the western sky is lighting up. Looks to be a noisy one.

  21. 21.

    fuckwit

    August 24, 2011 at 10:35 pm

    All predicted in “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler about 7 years ago.

    Also by this, over 15 years ago!
    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/

  22. 22.

    Keith G

    August 24, 2011 at 10:37 pm

    Fucking A! Its is raining in Houston. Not much – the sidewalks are barely damp, but it looks like it will keep going for a little bit longer and we will take what we can get.

  23. 23.

    mclaren

    August 24, 2011 at 10:45 pm

    Just wait till the water riots start in Southern California. Five-mile-long lines of people waiting for their daily 1-liter water ration in 135 degree Fahrenheit heat…and then the National Guard troops tell people after 5 hours, “Sorry, no water today. Better walk home.”

  24. 24.

    Texas Dem

    August 24, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    Given how many fat people I see here in Dallas, maybe a food shortage is not such a bad idea.

    Okay, no more snark. Seriously, isn’t it possible that the combination of climate disaster and food shortage will simply push our political system even further to the right? Adopting an authoritarian political model (as in Latin America circa mid 1980s) may be the only way for our corporate and financial elites to keep a lid on the unrest.

    Fun times ahead.

  25. 25.

    Mark S.

    August 24, 2011 at 11:43 pm

    @Texas Dem:

    Seriously, isn’t it possible that the combination of climate disaster and food shortage will simply push our political system even further to the right?

    Shit, it’s very possible. Scapegoating of minorities, jingoism, hyper-militarism, white resentment: all the ingredients have been brewing on Fox News every night for the last decade. They are just looking for the right crisis . . .

  26. 26.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    August 24, 2011 at 11:51 pm

    .
    .
    @Texas Dem:

    Seriously, isn’t it possible that the combination of climate disaster and food shortage will simply push our political system even further to the right?

    Fortunately, President Obama would never allow that.
    .
    .

  27. 27.

    Anna Granfors

    August 25, 2011 at 12:18 am

    Yeah, it’s not the Last Days Of Rome, or Ancien, or whatever. This is us, finally killing ourselves. Climate change has gone too far to recover from. We could eliminate every last greedy corporatocratist in the world and start building solar farms and wind farms and anything else we could think of, and it still wouldn’t be enough, probably. And the criminal thing is that we’re not even trying. It’s far easier laughing at idiots with corndogs in their mouths.

    Long ago and far away, there were once solar panels on the White House. ON THE WHITE HOUSE, GODDAMMIT!

    This is the most depressing thing I’ve read in some time, and that’s saying something. I’ve known that we’d find ourselves here for some time, now, but to see it in black and white…

    I’m not gonna stock up on anything. I’m just going to be ready to go to sleep and not wake up when this all starts really going down.

  28. 28.

    Southern Beale

    August 25, 2011 at 12:30 am

    Fuck it, it’s all bullshit anyway. All of our food comes from Mexico and Chile and Honduras and such anyway.

    You know, the last time this happened we had a big “back to the land” movement. People checked out of consumerism and decided to grow vegetables.

    We have a similar movement happening today, although instead of people going off to the hinterlands they’re growing gardens in their urban areas.

  29. 29.

    Yutsano

    August 25, 2011 at 12:48 am

    @Southern Beale: Chilean blueberries are quite nice to have in the winter. Just sayin’.

    Dropped a note over at your place. Let me know if you have any questions.

  30. 30.

    Kane

    August 25, 2011 at 5:48 am

    Over 80 percent of Global 500 companies now report to investors on climate change risks, opportunit­ies, impacts, and issues through the Carbon Disclosure Project.

    While Republicans and corporate front groups play their game of denying climate change, corporatio­ns, brokers, NASA, NOAA, the EPA and the Pentagon are investing, planning and bracing for the impacts of climate change.

  31. 31.

    Samara Morgan

    August 25, 2011 at 6:43 am

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): we are still spending in case you hadn’t noticed.

  32. 32.

    chopper

    August 25, 2011 at 10:44 am

    not so great when you factor in last year, which was also brutal for the wheat harvest worldwide. australia and russia, two big exporters, got wrecked.

  33. 33.

    evinfuilt

    August 25, 2011 at 3:39 pm

    Fortunately, President Obama would never allow that.

    @Uncle Clarence Thomas:

    Oh, most definitely. Obama would start by saying Republicans are right to blame “….” and then after some debate concede the entire point, and thus sell out all the elites to be turned into Soylent Green.

  34. 34.

    TenguPhule

    August 25, 2011 at 6:41 pm

    Until our society develops a taste for the proverbial fat cats, there will be no relief in sight.

    Stewed Feral Cat can be quite platable with enough garlic.

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