Robust evidence confirms an empirical link

Recently, new qualitative and quantitative work has shown the connection between food insecurity and instability or conflict. Whether conflict erupts over food sources; because individuals have lost their livelihoods and look to profit or simply find food by joining a military group; or because economic mismanagement or corruption pushed food prices out of reach for some citizens, there are several ways food insecurity can spur instability and/or conflict. A World Food Program study found that “approximately 95% of peer-reviewed studies examined” in the report “were able to establish an empirical link between food insecurity and instability.”37

Footnote 37

37 World Food Program, USA, “Winning the Peace: Hunger and Instability,” 2017, https://www.wfpus 23cbates@woodward.edua.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2017-Winning-the-Peace-Hungerand-Instability.pdf. The report goes on to note that during their review of the literature, they were able to pinpoint “at least 11 unique drivers of food insecurity…and 9 separate manifestations of social unrest.” The unique drivers included: “land competition, water competition, food price, food price volatility, food price uncertainty, agricultural production or wage loss, undernourishment, economic reliance on agriculture, drought, rainfall variability, and temperature fluctuation.” The unique manifestations of instability/conflict included: “social unrest, political instability, spikes riots, isolated violent conflict, homicide, terrorism or extremism, armed conflict, civil war, and interstate conflict.” The report also notes that: “Individual motivations for involvement in food-related social unrest and violence vary between contexts and people, but generally fall into three categories.” These include: “(1) Grievance refers to actions motivated by a perceived injustice”; “(2) Greed (economic) motivation occurs when there is a clear economic advantage to resorting to violence”; and “(3) Governance motivation occurs in the context of unachieved expectations or a failure of the state to prevent food insecurity.” Likewise, they found that “the drivers of food-related instability can be grouped into three interrelated categories: (1) Agricultural resource competition”; “(2) Market failure”; and “(3) Extreme weather.”

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Instability and conflict: past and present

From small, local-level conflicts, to larger state-on-state violence, to the possibility of increased superpower tensions over resources, food insecurity can threaten instability and/or violence at all levels. According to Charles P. Martin-Shields and Wolfgang Stojetz, “At the individual level, food insecurity—or the threat thereof—may create both material and non-material incentives for individuals to engage in some form of behavior that threatens peace.”38

In line with this thinking, but at the state-level, more recent scholarship has also looked anew at the origins of the Second World War and demonstrated the connection between food insecurity, or the fear thereof, and decisions in Berlin and Tokyo both to go to war and how to prosecute it. An ominous point in these studies is the correlation between a growing urban middle class in Germany and Japan and their desire for increased meat consumption, something we are seeing again today in a number of regions.39

In just the last decade-and-a-half, there are multiple instances of food insecurity as a key driver of instability and conflict. From food riots in multiple countries in 2007-2008, to droughts that led thousands into Syria’s cities in 2010, to food insecurity and other issues that drive millions to pursue a sometimes tragic route into Europe and America, to desertification that pits differences in food production methods and religion against one another, food is sustenance, and people will go to any ends to secure it.