Community | July 20, 2011 | 12 comments

The Price of Bread: A Measure of Political Stability

source: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/climate-change-food-crisis-price-bread-political-ins...

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Schnookums
What can a humble loaf of bread tell us about the world?

The answer is: far more than you might imagine. For one thing, that loaf can be "read" as if it were a core sample extracted from the heart of a grim global economy. Looked at another way, it reveals some of the crucial fault lines of world politics, including the origins of the Arab spring that has now become a summer of discontent.

Consider this: between June 2010 and June 2011, world grain prices almost doubled. In many places on this planet, that proved an unmitigated catastrophe. In those same months, several governments fell, rioting broke out in cities from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Nairobi, Kenya, and most disturbingly three new wars began in Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Even on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Bedouin tribes are now in revolt against the country's interim government and manning their own armed roadblocks.

And in each of these situations, the initial trouble was traceable, at least in part, to the price of that loaf of bread. If these upheavals were not "resource conflicts" in the formal sense of the term, think of them at least as bread-triggered upheavals.

Growing Climate Change in a Wheat Field

Bread has classically been known as the staff of life. In much of the world, you can't get more basic, since that daily loaf often stands between the mass of humanity and starvation. Still, to read present world politics from a loaf of bread, you first have to ask: of what exactly is that loaf made? Water, salt, and yeast, of course, but mainly wheat, which means when wheat prices increase globally, so does the price of that loaf—and so does trouble.......

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    Food,  Agriculture,  Hunger,  Peak Oil,  2 more
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12 comments // The Price of Bread: A Measure of Political Stability

  • GoodGodGuy
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  

    • Yes, climate change events are hitting wheat crops especially hard which is contributing to price increases which will get worse. So what is the answer from the industrial agricultural conglomerate? Why of course, introduce untested patented GM wheat seeds that cannot be saved to really score a profit, contaminate the competition and take advantage of those who are hungry while taking away their food sovereignty and destroying agriculture as we know it at a time when that is paramount to their survival. Even when there are natural traits that can guard against drought. Like the minerals and natural gas that lie under the surface of the melting Arctic ice, the seeds of this world and the crops that provide life are being co-opted and will become owned by government entities and corporate backers in an attempt to now put the big squeeze on those already brought to their limits.The result of this in a world where water is now scarcer as well will hopefully end in finally bringing them down.

    • 10 months ago
  • warman1138
  • remanns
  • littlwarrior
  • remanns
  • Vic_Romano
    • +4
      Vic_Romano  

    • Great article, Schnookums!

      However, this is where my criticisms of an inflationary monetary policy are best evinced. It has gotten to a point where the prices of the most BASIC human needs have exceeded a person's ability to amass the money to pay for them. And while we here in the good ol' USA haven't experienced inflation to the extent of the North African nations, us po' folk are getting priced out of many markets.

    • 10 months ago
  • Schnookums
  • Jennifer_Guinn
  • remanns
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