SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — The riots in Cairo are the result of United States policy gone bad. In fact, we — you, me, U.S. taxpayers — are to blame.

Strategic policy, I am not speaking of. Political policy, I am not speaking of. Nor am I talking about defense policy or other such foreign relations. The uprising in Cairo is about U.S. tax dollars supporting farm programs that wreak havoc on food prices worldwide.

Mubarak speech enrages opposition

Egypt is among the world’s largest importers of wheat. When such commodity prices rise due to U.S. subsidy and tariff intervention, as well as speculation in the capital markets, the price of bread skyrockets. Bread is made from wheat.

In 2008, food riots broke out in Egypt, Mexico, Bangladesh and many developing countries when farmers, attracted to ethanol subsidies, abandoned food production in favor of fuel. This, along with rising oil prices, droughts, and other factors, decreased food supplies. Prices spiked.

Adding to the crisis was U.S. trade policy: Because we subsidize wheat, corn and a handful of other crops so much, we can offer them cheaper on the world market and “dump” supplies on other countries. This puts farmers in those countries out of business, as they are forced to compete with artificially low prices at the market.

Go back a little further in time in Egypt and the roots of the political crisis can be found with its 1992 land reform. Guided by what many say was U.S. and International Monetary Fund influence, the country’s small farmers who were “registered tenants” became subject to rent increases, in many cases triple what they had been paying.

As expected, these small farmers couldn’t afford the steep rent increases and were forced off their land. More than half of all Egyptians live in the countryside, and millions were forced into poverty. Moreover, Egypt itself became more reliant on imports.

We are the bad guy, not Mubarak

Cut to today when the perfect storm of U.S. farm policy, U.S. foreign policy, and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s quantitative easing has fueled global commodity and food prices.

Is it any wonder that a disenfranchised population subject to increasing economic oppression would revolt?

Unfortunately for him, President Hosni Mubarak is being cast as both the messenger and master of the plan of attack against the masses. But lurking in the shadows of Tahrir Square is U.S. policy.

In Washington last week I made the rounds with food lobbyists, activists and reporters. The big story and what’s on every one’s mind is food security. A consortium of major foundations and activist groups has committed millions of dollars to research the issue. Farm groups are uniting to stave off anticipated regulation and policy reforms.

Players are taking sides and getting their strategies together. Why the posturing? Next year a farm bill will be re-introduced in Congress as it is every five years. Sure the bill is about farmers and agriculture. But it’s also about taxes and subsidies — and political unrest in countries far, far away — in places such as Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen. The world is linked in these intricate and often unimaginable ways.

The riots we are seeing on the news today will eventually quell. However, unless we reform our subsidy system and address our true role in world trade there will be more uprisings to come.

And soon enough the violence will wind its way back out of the light and into the shadows, where perverted U.S. policies reside.