Grand Total, Food Consumption
FAO publishes this commodity's food-balance elements in two domains with different methodologies (historic 1961-2013 vs current 2010-2023); they disagree materially where they overlap, so both are kept as separate labelled series rather than spliced.
Event_Log
··1980Iran-Iraq War beginsCorrelationExpected causation
Eight-year war (1980-1988) imposes massive fiscal costs, disrupts oil exports, and entrenches a rationing/coupon system for basic goods.
Why this link: Wartime disruption to trade, agriculture, and the rationing system that followed weighed on aggregate food consumption levels.
Caveat: FAOSTAT consumption estimates for this period are model-based and reflect many factors beyond the war, including domestic harvests.
Lag: 1-2 yearsSource: Encyclopaedia Britannica011980Wartime rationing coupon system introducedCorrelationExpected causation
Amid the Iraqi invasion, a trade squeeze and food shortages, the government begins distributing ration coupons for sugar, rice, meat, cooking oil and other staples through neighborhood cooperatives; the coupon ('koopon') system remains in force through the 1980s and is phased out only toward the end of the Ahmadinejad era.
Why this link: The coupon system directly rationed access to basic foodstuffs for most of the 1980s, a documented and targeted channel affecting aggregate food consumption.
Caveat: FAOSTAT estimates are annual and model-based, and cannot fully separate the rationing system's effect from wartime supply shocks and harvest variation.
Lag: Immediate, decade-longSource: IMF Working Paper -- Iran: The Chronicles of the Subsidy Reform