Recipe for revolution

It started in America. The Midwest has for weeks been suffering what is now the worst drought in living memory. Prices for maize and wheat have soared by 50 per cent and the G20 will next week decide whether to call an emergency meeting to discuss what the United Nations believes could be a repeat of the 2008 food price crisis. It is being spoken of as a humanitarian disaster, and rightly. But the last few years have taught us that, when hunger strikes, political upheaval will not be far behind.

Even now, the Arab Spring is seen as a popular outcry for political freedom, but those of us who lived in the Arab world in the years leading up to it know better. The first signs of popular agitation begin at the grocery stall, not at a public debate. The preoccupations of the West — democracy and human rights — are as nothing compared to the need to put food on the table. Governments can lock up and even torture their political enemies, and face little protest. But when the price of lemons goes up eightfold, as it just has in Tunis, it is time for governments to be afraid. The link between hunger and revolution is far stronger than the political analysts will concede.

I would not have believed that food prices were so powerful in shaping world politics had I not lived in Egypt for the best part of the last decade. Staying in impoverished neighbourhoods and short of money myself, I shared the daily routines and life stories of ordinary Egyptians and queued beside them for the discs of aish baladi, the flatbread sold at subsidised prices of less than 1p apiece. Not once during those years did I meet another Middle East correspondent.