As national mainstream news begins to cover the food situation going on worldwide, Americans are becoming concerned about how they might be affected at a local level and what we can all do to help. What are the causes of food shortages? Will these problems self correct, or should we all be paying attention?

Here are some headlines:
Americans hoard food as industry seeks regs from the Washington Times
Bay Area Shoppers Asked to Limit Rice Purchases from NBC11 in California
Duck and Cover: It's the New Survivorism from the NY Times
Era of Cheap Food Ends as Prices Surge from the Times Online
Japan's Hunger Becomes A Dire Warning for Other Nations from The Age, Business News in Australia
Eat Locally, Survive Globally from The Star in Canada

In short, other first world nations are already feeling the pinch, but not suffering in the way that poorer nations are. It's unlikely that the US is actually having any real shortages yet, only Costco runs on staple items caused by worried Americans hearing news from overseas and reacting. It's unlikely that the US will ever suffer from a long-term food shortage absent some hugely catastrophic event like the super volcano scenario, but with the oil prices headed upward we will likely see food prices on the rise for at least the rest of the year.

In Britain, for instance, food has already risen about 33% and the US could see food prices following that outline. That's why the Wall Street Journal recently advised readers to stock up on food

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

The WSJ article does a great job of spelling out the reasons why food prices are rising and what to expect, so make sure and read it in full (it's short.) Today I saw another news story on striking truck drivers which revealed that drivers are currently absorbing the rising cost of disel. Which means that at some point the trucking industry is going to shut down, or we, the consumers, are going to start to be the ones to absorb the cost.

Often I see people online giving some general bit of advice like, "become more self sufficient" or "pay attention to what's going on." But that kind of advice is rarely helpful, because the people who need that advice are the kind of people who need a little bit of hand-holding to take the advice. I once worked for a really great company where I had an amazing boss and a support system that actually worked. At that job I learned that asking the right question is more important than getting an answer. In honor of that I want to spend some time expanding on what we can do about this food situation as individuals.

Stocking up: One piece of advice I hear more often is for individuals to start stock piles of food. This is a tricky option, because most people don't really know much about shelf-life or food storage. Most canned goods will only last about a year, which leaves dry ingredients like beans which also go bad eventually. The only way to make long-term food storage work without waste is to cycle it, by integrating the pantry and only storing foods that one eats. Simply Living has some videos that walk through the process of setting up such a system. You may have to register, but it's free and they don't spam.

Growing your own: In my opinion the best option is to be less dependent on other food sources by growing it at home. Even apartment dwellers who have so much as a porch, a balcony, or a windowsill can take part in vegetable gardening. And anyone at all can grow sprouts. Heirloom seeds are best for growing vegetables and herbs, because gardeners can let some of each species go to seed each year and have an unending supply. Most plants sold in gardening sections of supermarkets and the like are hybrid and are limited at reproducing. Companies that create new species of plants try to make sure that plants can't propogate in order to keep gardeners dependent. I'll be adding a new section to the links page soon on gardening resources including heirloom seed companies, and I am documenting my wheatgrass experiment with pictures which I will be sharing soon. My sprouting guide will be free and very detailed with step-by-step instructions.

My long-promised Wild Food Diary is available to enjoy. It is very graphic intensive and kind of a mess at the moment. Please excuse the roughness of the code until my webmaster has a chance to help me clean it up.

As my readers may have heard, there are a lot of out-of-the-ordinary earthquakes going on lately. There have been earthquakes off the coast of Oregon, in the midwest, and in Nevada. Some scientists are saying that ancient fault lines may have reactivated.

Scientists say that the Oregon quakes look like what happens before a volcano erupts, but there are not volcanos in the immediate area of the offshore quakes. I found this nifty map updated regularly to show the magnitude of earthquakes and when they occurred.

Get your passports ready, Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody hinted that the US may have to reinstitute the "D" word, in testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Commitee.

Republican Senator Karen Johnson of Arizona has come under media fire recently for questioning the official version of events on September 11th, 2001. Senator Johnson is in good company, as mentioned in one of my recent blogs Jesse Ventura and a U.N. official have also made their doubts concerning 9/11 public.

In UFO news, something weird is going on in Baltimore.

"It wasn't until we caught it on tape that we realized the magnitude of what they were actually talking about," said Sgt. Warehime. "The sound is almost deafening. You can't describe it. Seeing it on tape without hearing the sound doesn't do it justice."

Videotape taken at 3:34 a.m. on April 23 does show a flash of light that lasts a fraction of a second and lights up an area the size of a football field in the middle of the night.

The flash on the tape is accompanied by loud boom that sounds like a crack of electricity or lightning.