Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Food prices, and predicting riots

The cover story of last week’s Spectator was about the political impact of rising crop prices: John R. Bradley, who alone predicted the Egyptian revolution, explained how the same phenomenon is happening again. His piece speaks best for itself but today HSBC has released some research making the same point. I thought Coffee Housers may be interested.

The picture above shows how much of the US is hit by drought now, and given that it’s the number one exporter this has hit world prices. The price of wheat, corn and soyabean has rocketed by 30 per cent, 25 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively since the start of the year. As Bradley argued, today’s crop prices will inflate tomorrow’s meat prices. The drought would be bad anyway, but its effect on hunger is exacerbated by the decision to use crops for the supposedly environmentally friendly ethanol.

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