Eventually the cost of shipping fresh produce and other consumables from giant production locations like California's central valley will become cost prohibitive. As fuel supplies dwindle and costs rise, our incomes will remain flat, inflation in our food and commodities markets will increase at a ever growing rate. The result will be we will be priced out of the market. This is a reality based on simply supply and demand economics. The demand will only rise, the supply will become more expensive to produce and deliver thus the cost will rise.
California's Central Valley, America's Pantry.
The current trend in food production is not unlike a drug dealer looking to increase profit. Reduce the main ingredient with a inert similar substance. Our processed foods that are highly packaged do just that. As costs rise the product is made more affordable by cutting the actual food down to it's bare minimum and substituting ingredients with easily available inexpensive filler. the cheapest of them are "air" and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
This is the example. As fresh produce become more expensive and volatile in price the poor will purchase less and less of those items. Nutrition falls away and is replaced by "junk" processed food with ingredients of questionable origin from the far east.
Boxed Macaroni and Cheese is a far cry from melted cheese on pasta. Stabilizers, colorants, filler, with added nutrients and massive marketing round out the product.
We will face a food inflation crisis sooner than we think. Already certain food items are priced out of many people's budgets. Peppers, fresh tomatoes, lettuce and fruit are all becoming more costly to the average household thanks to rising petroleum prices. Our agricultural technology was built on cheap oil. We have become highly mechnised and the economy of scale has risen such that many food crops come exclusively from isolated areas in our nation. As we became accustomed to fresh produced from 1000 miles away we lost the ability to utilize our local farm produce. We forgot simple canning techniques and growing. Our local farmers were forced out of the business of producing food for local consumption to producing a ingredient crop that will ship hundreds if not tens of thousands of miles where it is turned into filler. High Fructose corn syrup is one example. Once the local demand for local produced vanished in the 1950's and the supermarket came into being the farmers were forced to adopt crops in keeping with a new global and national scale of food production.
All that is going to change as oil disappears. As fuel prices rise we are left with three choices:
1. Eat less "food" and more filler.
2. Succumb to poor nutrition and bad fatty diets of cheap meat and junk.
3. Begin to grow and produce for local consumption and as consumers seek out that produce.
It is a simple fact. It costs money to ship truckloads of produce 3000 miles. It costs less to ship it 50 miles direct to the consumer.
Prepare for the future.
Seek out you local growers and farmers markets if you haven't already.
Look into local cooperative farming in you area.
Research you local food products, when they are available and how to preserve them.
Eat seasonally, design one or two meals a week based on locally produced food for that time.
It is going to take small steps to grow our local economies. Start by supporting your local farmers directly whenever possible.
Not only for the future but also because it tastes good too.