Modeling the Relationship Between Food and Civil Conflict

Abstract

We built a system of systems model to better understand the relationship between the agricultural sector, other economic factors, and changes in the expected value of conflict. Our model integrates multiple factors, including food production, food trade, population, and civil conflict, and determines their interdependencies based on shared inputs or outputs. We find that severe food price shocks, precipitated by multiple breadbasket failures, can severely impact a country’s GDP and its ability to purchase and consume a sufficient amount of food, resulting in an increase in civil conflict and related casualties. A sharp population increase, as potentially caused by an immigration surge, was found to have a similar impact, though not as strong.