correlation of food prices and uprisings

[auroraglacialis]

Here is a link to the original paper: [1108.2455] The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East

The numbers are death counts.

And an interesting excerpt on the causes of the food price changes:

In a separate paper we consider the causes of the increases in food prices [66]. While
there have been several suggested origins of the food price increases, we nd the dominant
ones to be investor speculation and ethanol production. Our analysis shows that the two
parts of the dynamics of prices can be directly attributed to the two dierent causes: the
price peaks are due to speculators causing price bubbles, and the background increase shown
in Fig. 2 is due to corn to ethanol conversion. This intuitive result is made quantitative by
the analysis in that paper.
Both factors in food prices can be linked directly to recent US governmental actions.
Speculator activity has been enhanced by deregulation of the commodities markets that
exempted dealers from trading limits [67{69], and subsidies and other policies have been
central to the growth of ethanol conversion [70, 71].

I would add to that the increasing degradation of soils and climate reduced reductions in food production (which then are possibly "blown up" by speculation).

And yes, in poorer countries, the amount of income that goes to food is a lot higher. Sometimes it is basically all of it, when people live in makeshift homes. But one would be surprised at what the situation in Europe is in parts. For me personally, food makes about 20% of my monthly expenses (in part because I try to get organic food) with rent making 60%. For some others, especially those that are less well off, the percentage may actually easily exceed 30%, particularly if they are living in state-financed housing projects or live on jobless aid. This describes probably well the situation in the areas of England that were uprising. In the case of food making 30% of your income ore more and you already turn each dime twice - if food proces then rise a bit, you feel it directly.
I dont know all details of this, but I think the reason why people did looting and such in London were poverty and by that could also be incited by food prices. I can imagine a lot of the stolen stuff was stolen to be sold (watch out for cheap TVs and such on ebay ) in order to get at least temporarily a bit more above the bare minimum subsistence line.
Now what governments in Europe seem to do a lot is food subsidies. I know this from Germany and from Sweden. In that case, vital parts of the food supply are subsidized or at least price-controlled. That way, people will always have affordable bread, milk, eggs and a couple of other things. I think this is at the same time a good thing (poor people can still afford food), and a thing that is used to control unrest. It kind of hides the reality of the food situation from us if it goes bad for some time. We either dont see it because food is only a small percentage of what we spend - or we dont see it so much because of these regulations. In any case, this could be part of the reason why there are little "uprisings" in Germany and Sweden.