Food riot

Food riots occur if there is a shortage and/or unequal distribution of food. Causes can be food price rises, harvest failures, incompetent food storage, transport problems, food speculation, hoarding, poisoning of food, or attacks by pests.| When the public becomes too desperate in such conditions, they may attack shops, farms, homes, or government buildings to attain bread or other staple foods such as grain or salt, as in the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots. Often, food riots are part of a larger social movement, such as the Russian revolution or the French revolution.

History

Any casual observer of working-class behaviour during the years 1740 to 1800 might easily have come to the conclusion that the majority of the lower classes were disaffected to the point of disloyalty toward the King and his Government. Such a verdict, however, would have been inaccurate, as a careful study of the facts would have proved. There was never any evidence or display of disloyalty, nor any real signs of disaffection toward the Government. Even when the opportunity came in 1745, and again in 1789, for the people to ally themselves with revolutionary movements, they remained aloof. It is no exaggeration to say that the suffering masses of the eighteenth century never tried to alter the Constitution and never openly desired a change in the form of administration. What concerned them most was the adequate meeting of their daily needs. When that became difficult because of high food prices and continued exploitation, they quickly lost their patience and vented their anger in noisy demonstrations. But when commodities remained plentiful and prices fairly stable, the working classes maintained their tranquility and demonstrations became rare. There is little doubt that the physical distress and anxiety felt by the lower classes over issues of food scarcity and price stability, were responsible for the explosions of violence so frequently occurring throughout the greater part of the century.

The turbulence of the colliers is, of course, to be accounted for by something more elementary than politics: it was the instinctive reaction to lacking an essential component to living. In addition the conditions of their daily work imposed on them a discipline and co-operation that could hardly be looked for in the weavers and framework knitters of domestic industry. When they set out for bread they marched under captains (possibly their overmen or charter - masters) and when they were forced to retire they found themselves places of refuge from their pursuers.

Twenty-first century

During the period 2007-2008, a rise in global food prices led to riots in various countries. A similar crisis recurred in 2010-2011.

Due to a wheat crop failure in the mid-western United States due to drought in 2012, as well as simultaneous dryness during the start of the Russia's wheat season, a deficient monsoon rainfall in India and a drought in Africa's Sahel region, prediction were made for a possible outbreak of protests and riots akin to previous years. Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, said that computer modelling suggested an outbreak of instability, while he also blamed the use of corn for ethanol as exacerbating the problem. However, the director of trade and markets and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, David Hallam, said that there was no imminent danger of such an outcome, though a worsening change in climate and government policies, such as export bans and panicked-buying, could trigger such a scenario. Oxfam added that a one percent increase in the price of food could lead to 16 million more falling below the poverty line. The International Food Policy Research Institute's Director-General Shenggen Fan suggested a global crisis could "hit us very soon. [Using corn for ethanol] actually pushed global food prices higher and many poor people, particularly women and children, have suffered."

See also

• Southern Bread Riots
• Meat riots
• Food riots in the Middle East

Further reading

• Bush, Ray (2010). "Food Riots: Poverty, Power and Protest". Journal of Agrarian Change. 10 (1): 119–129. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0366.2009.00253.x.