Let Them Eat Bread: How Food Subsidies Prevent (and Provoke) Revolutions in the Middle East

Here is a great article from Annia Ciezadlo writing in Foreign Affairs.  


"Change is sweeping through the Middle East today, but one thing remains the same: the region once known as the Fertile Crescent is now the world's most dependent on imported grain. Of the top 20 wheat importers for 2010, almost half are Middle Eastern countries. The list reads like a playbook of toppled and teetering regimes: Egypt (1), Algeria (4), Iraq (7), Morocco (8), Yemen (13), Saudi Arabia (15), Libya (16), Tunisia (17)."


"The bread wars go back to the Cold War era, when the two superpowers wooed smaller nations with guns, grain, and other goods. It was during this time that many Arab regimes instituted social safety nets based on the Soviet model of centralized bread distribution. "


"As expensive as they are, bread subsidies do not succeed in lifting people out of poverty; in fact, by discouraging domestic agricultural investment, they have often hurt the very people they are intended to help. According to the United Nations' 2009 Arab Human Development Report, the Middle East is the only region outside of sub-Saharan Africa where the number of malnourished people has risen since the early 1990s."




http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67672/annia-ciezadlo/let-them-eat-bread?page=show

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SSC