‘According to a group of researchers, their mathematical model using food prices can predict social unrest and riots. Given the drought and rampant speculation, this may bode ill for several regions in the world. Food prices have been rising for quite some time, and aren’t showing any sign of slowing.

People raise their voices and go to arms for reasons too complicated to address here altogether, but it would be folly to leave hunger out of the equation. The spark may be an anti-Islam film or an incident of police brutality, but Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that it’s high food prices that create “the range of conditions in which the tiniest spark can lead to riots.”

History of Accurate Predictions

The NECSI has received attention of late for its accurate predictions of food price behavior, most notably those showing spikes in food prices that coincided with the 2007-2008 riots.

They even submitted findings to the U.S. government—four days before Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian produce vendor, set himself on fire and, many say, catalyzed the Arab Spring.’

(Source: activistpost.com)