More to It

Some might describe it as MTV-generation myopia: the notion that the sweeping events that grab headlines for days on end can readily be explained by near term developments.

A politician is caught red-handed doing something he shouldn't; members of a minority group are victimized in a random attack; a protestor sets himself on fire -- and suddenly things go haywire. But is that all there is to it?

While such events can serve as catalysts or wake-up calls, history suggests the disruptive forces have usually been brewing for some time. Then, as with the build-up between two tectonic plates, the pressure erupts into an earthquake.

With that in mind, the following Christian Science Monitor report, "West Africa Rising: Could Rising Food Prices Spark Egypt-Style Revolt in Africa?" gives a better sense of where things stand nowadays than one can find in other mainstream publications:

Soaring food prices – such as wheat, which has hit a 2-1/2-year high – could feed political tumult in Africa, despite earlier proclamations that an Egypt-style revolt would not spread to sub-Saharan Africa.

Egypt's revolution was triggered by many sparks, one of which was bread; or rather wheat, a staple whose soaring price and insufficient supply could become the dry wood for political tumult across the African continent this year.

Prices for that staple crop now sit at a 2 1/2-year high, and Egypt – currently the world's biggest exporter of televised scenes involving young men waving flags – just happens to be wheat's biggest importer. And while academics will have semesters ad infinitum to weigh the relative importance of Twitter vs. bread in the fall of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, the more immediate question could be what comes next across Egypt's backyard: sub-Saharan Africa.

Thirty African countries are scheduled to hold elections over the next 12 months. The list includes food-scarce nations like Chad and Madagascar, alongside terminally unstable lands like Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

And yet, as of last month, food prices are already sitting on a record high. Last week, the United Nations announced average food prices climbed 25 percent in the past year, including a 3.4 percent jump in January alone.

"It's easy to see how the food supply can translate directly into political unrest," Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute think tank in Washington, told The Guardian.

What's not easy to see, he added, is how the economy of what we eat will fundamentally improve over decades and elections to come.

To be sure, some of 2011's costly cuisine has been caused by short-term disasters, like erratic weather in Russia or bad crops in Canada.

But the affordability of food is also being undermined by longer-term trends, such as the growing chunk of farmland now dedicated to cultivating biofuels, or the emergence of China as a net food importer.

Underground water reserves in drylands like Saudi Arabia, Mr. Brown added, are on the wane. Plus, given the vagaries of climate change, Russia's wheat-withering changeable weather could prove to be a new norm.

"This isn't just about the Muslim Brotherhood and it isn't just about politics," the economist Jefferey Sachs told Reuters. "This is about hunger, about poverty, about food production, about a change of world economy. This is one large swathe of 10,000 miles of potential instability."

Comments

[roger]

For humans, gestation is 9 months,birth takes
place in minutes.What appears to be spontaneous
is actually a long process gone unnoticed hence
the ILLUSION of rapidity.Dialectics was a way
of thinking very familiar to the old Greeks
such as Heraclitus, it is totaly ignored in modern
society dumbed down by the culture of instant gratification
and compounded by idealist theologians.

[roger]

For starters,it takes 3/4 gal. of oil to produce
one pound of beef. The use of oil to produce food
is in direct correlation to it's price.
Just something to think about.