For instance, searching Google News for “food shortages” leads to a wealth of articles from hundreds of news souces, including Time, US News & World Report, The Telegraph (UK), and on and on. This is a real and fast-developing situation.

The Third World has been battling this issue for a long time, but mainstream America has, for the most part, deemed it a problem “over there” rather than one “right here, right now.” That is changing. Searching Google News for “food shortages in America” leads to a significant package of stories as well.

George Ure’s fine site Urban Survival discusses this again this morning, part of a continuing focus his site’s had recently on food shortages and food riots around the world. Rice shortages at Wal-Mart and Costco are troubling. As Ure notes, even a Wall Street Journal columnist is advising Americans to stock up and store food. It’s one thing when Mormon conservative newsletter publisher Howard Ruff advises stocking up, but another thing entirely when a Wall Street Journal writer suggests it.

Sure, the approaches are different. Sure, the WSJ column is about buying relative ly cheap food today so you don’t have to buy more expensive foodstuffs later and Ruff has been predicting “the coming bad times” since the 70s, evoking imagery that could include violence and some degree of social breakdown

What is especially troubling, is that in the past when writers and analysts who predicted coming economic crashes and severe shortages of important resources, they did so at a time when Peak Oil was coming not here.

And that’s what has changed. The era of cheap oil is over, which means the era of cheap anything is over. It’s time to realize that and take steps to protect yourself and your family.