Are Record Food Prices Fueling Global Instability?

Food prices are rising, warns the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the implications for global stability could be dire.

According to the FAO, the monthly food price index rose 3.4 percent in January to the highest it's been since the organization started compiling the index in 1990. And it's only expected to continue to rise in the coming months. Experts fear that the increasing pressure on food prices is one of the root causes of the widespread uprisings in the Middle East, and if the U.N.'s prediction of a continued rise holds true, that trend will get worse.

"The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating," FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement Thursday.

The current protests in Egypt and elsewhere have not been focused on food, but some of the earliest rumblings in the crisis surrounded food. Two weeks ago, a restaurant owner set himself on fire in front of the parliament building in Cairo because officials wouldn't give him his share of subsidized bread. A few days before, a fruit cart vendor in Tunisia did the same thing. And Algerians rioted over food throughout January.

Scholars like Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of "World on the Edge" and "Who Will Feed China?," wonder whether the riots in the Middle East are a local phenomenon or a portent of broader instability to come.

"When we look at ancient civilizations like the Sumerians and the Mayans, food was the weak link that led to the eventual downfall of their civilizations," he told AOL News. "I had long ago rejected the idea that food could be the weak link that would bring down our modern, global society, but now I'm starting to think that not only it could be, but that it is."

High food prices may inform the violence in the Middle East, but the world has yet to see the kind of widespread food riots that took place in impoverished communities from Mexico to Bangladesh in 2008. The overall food price index has hit a record high, but the highest increases have been oils, fats and dairy products. The prices of staples like rice and wheat have risen as well, but have yet to reach the historic highs of three years ago.

Abbassian has previously said that while he's worried about the potential instability that high food prices could cause in the Middle East, he maintains that the current uprisings in Egypt are first and foremost political protests. He also notes some encouraging information -- while food prices have skyrocketed globally, some good harvests have kept them low locally.

Still, major weather events, from floods to fires and droughts, dealt some serious blows to international grain yields this summer, and many are worried that that sort of catastrophic weather could become the norm, rather than the exception, as climate change continues to change the face of global agriculture.

For now, the FAO's predictions of rising food prices raise serious concerns about the coming months for grain-importing nations. Experts are nervously looking forward to next year's harvest, which could either alleviate the struggles of last summer or put further pressure on global stocks.

"Unless we have an exceptional global harvest this year, I think we're going to see continuing instability, uncertainty, future rises in food prices and the possibility of a lot of governments collapsing," Brown said. "It could get grim pretty fast."