Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years

Why does the League of the South advocate buying local food, raising your own (as much as you can), and promoting local farmers? Because the global food system can't match the loyalties, community connections, and vitality of self-sustaining communities -- as this unsettling development shows:

The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it's getting worse. That's putting the squeeze on poor families and forcing bakeries, bagel shops and delis to explain price increases to their customers.

U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent.

Higher prices for food and energy are again expected to play a leading role in pushing the government's consumer price index higher for March.

Increases in fuel costs and soaring demand have led to disruptions in the global food supply, stoking riots in Haiti, leading to the fall of the government when it was unable to restore oder. And unrest is breaking out elsewhere, including Egypt, Bangladesh, and Mozambique. And officials see even worse problems for even developed nations:

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also speaking at the joint IMF-World Bank spring meeting, said, "If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries ... will be terrible."

He added that "disruptions may occur in the economic environment ... so that at the end of the day most governments, having done well during the last five or 10 years, will see what they have done totally destroyed, and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed also."

With the concentration of food production and distribution in this country, bottlenecks will become the rule rather than the exception. Oversized, centralized bureaucracies and corporations, because they must do things "by the book," lack the resilience and adaptability of smaller, more nimble operations, which respond faster to changing local conditions.

Smaller is not only beautiful, it's also better at adapting and surviving. Ask any dinosaur.