I think I found this story at Survival Blog a few days ago. As I’ve said before crop shortages and increased demand are being ignored and a lot of people are going to be caught unaware in the coming months as food prices spike. That could lead to repeats of the 2008 food riots:
The head of the world’s biggest food company Nestle said on Friday that rising food prices have created conditions “similar” to 2008 when hunger riots took place in many countries.
“The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality,” the Swiss giant’s chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview.
“We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level.
“If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of course you are going to feel it more than here (in Europe) where it is maybe eight percent.”
In 2008, the price of cereals reached historic levels, provoking a food crisis and riots in a number of African countries, as well as in Haiti and the Philippines.
In September the UN food agency’s food price index came in at 225 points, just higher than the peak it hit in June 2008. It is down from the record 237.7 points hit in February this year.
Food price inflation this year is seen as having contributed to the “Arab Spring” unrest in north Africa and the Middle East and there are fears of fresh unrest elsewhere.
Of course the article goes on to claim speculators and climate change are the culprit and even features a quote where the idea of charging more for water would solve the problem. That’s all asinine; the real issue is that in a charged world political climate the poor are about to get hit hard by food prices. Get prepared.