SPECULATION

IATP Webinar What's Causing Higher and More Volatile Food Prices Around the World? Over the last five years, global food prices have risen dramatically, and become much more volatile. After decades of low prices, disruptions in global agriculture markets are having serious effects on food security, farmers and the environment. PPT presentations in rt column.

Speculation and the Frenzy in the Food Market 2011 (Real News Youtube video). More on the link between Wall St speculation and the Arab Spring. Felicity Lawrence in Chicago.

Food Farming & Freedom, Sowing the Arab Spring shows that while the protest in the Arab Spring came as a surprise to many observers, it wasnt to Rami Zurayk, an experienced Lebanese agronomist, who had been "charting the collapse of traditional agricultural livelihoods in the Middle East since the late 1980s."

In Feeding the Arab Uprising, (Heinrich Boll Stiftung p 119) he notes " In Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen the increase in the price of food as a significant component of the cost of living has certainly contributed to the initial mobilization of the people, especially in the less favored classes. However, food rapidly disappeared from the list of popular demands, as people expressed their disillusionment with the regime as a whole, rather than their need for cheaper food."

See Underneath the Egyptian Revolution: The politics of food for more. Remember it was a fruit and vegetable seller that set alight the arab uprising...

See our Commentary on G20 Summit aimed at controlling food specualtion. Did it 'Cure Capitalism?