Between 2007 and 2012 global food price volatility affected millions of people on low and precarious incomes. Research partners from ten developing countries accompanied households in rural and urban sites, from just after the first price spike in 2008, through a second spike in 2011 and into a period of relative price stability until 2014. In this IDS Bulletin we show how a multitude of micro-reactions to rising and unpredictable prices has laid the foundations for transformed societies. As food has been increasingly commodified, as people on low incomes have struggled to pay for life’s necessities, as they have responded by changing their ways of making a living, residences, diets, family relationships and ways of caring for one another, we map out how food price volatility has played a part in global social change.