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Global food security and food riots – an agent-based modelling approach

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Abstract

Due to negative consequences of climate change for agriculture and food production shocks affecting different areas of the world, the past two decades saw the conditions of global food security increasingly worsen. This has resulted in negative consequences for the world economy, partly causing international food price spikes and social upheavals. In this paper we present statistical findings along with a preliminary version of an original agent-based model called the Dawe Global Security Model that simulates the global food market and the political fragility of countries. The model simulates the effects of food insecurity on international food prices and how these, coupled with national political fragility and international food trade can, in turn, increase the probability of food riots in countries. The agents in the model are the 213 countries of the world whose characteristics reflect empirical data and the international trade of food is also simulated based on real trade partnerships and data. The model has been informed, calibrated and validated using real data and the results of these procedures are presented in the paper. To further test the model we also present the model’s forecasts for the near future in terms of food prices and incidence of food riots. The Dawe Global Security Model can be used to test scenarios on the evolution of shocks to global food production and analyse consequences for food riots. Further developments of the model can include national responses to food crises to investigate how countries can influence the spread of global food crises.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alexander Phillips, research assistant at the Global Sustainability Institute, who collaborated in a previous version of this paper. In addition, the authors would like to thank the reviewers, whose suggestions definitely improved the quality of this paper. The work related to this paper has been supported by the Dawe Charitable Trust.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, CB1-1PT, UK

    Davide Natalini & Aled Wynne Jones

  2. Department of Social Studies, Linnaeus University, Universitetsplatsen 1, 35195, Växjö, Sweden

    Giangiacomo Bravo

  3. Linnaeus University Center for Data Intensive Sciences & Applications (DISA@LNU), Växjö, Sweden

    Giangiacomo Bravo

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  1. Davide Natalini
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Correspondence to Davide Natalini.

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Appendices

Appendix 1 Database of food riot updated from Natalini et al. (2015)

Table 5 Monthly food riots with references for the period 2005–2013. Rows in bold are the entries added from the authors to the original database from Natalini et al. (2015)
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Appendix 2 Random-effects assigned to each country as estimated by REEMtree

Table 6 Random effects for the countries included in the DGSM
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Natalini, D., Bravo, G. & Jones, A.W. Global food security and food riots – an agent-based modelling approach. Food Sec. 11, 1153–1173 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-017-0693-z

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