Not to sound like too much of a Pollyanna here (believe me, I’m as cynical as they come), but I do see some hope in all of this: We are remarkably adaptive in our behaviors, and rising food prices can only lead more people to grow and put up their own food. And you don’t need to be a landowner; if you’ve got a balcony or a front stoop you can do at least some degree of container gardening. And even if the price of flour doubles tomorrow, it’ll still be cheaper to bake bread at home than to buy it at the store. Now, a growing season’s worth of tomatoes and peppers and some homemade baguettes do not a diet make, but it’s a dent at any rate. All of this requires time and knowledge, of course, but I see that as a hidden benefit. Americans have needed to stop watching TV and start paying attention for far too long as it is. While I don’t want to bear the financial brunt of this any more than anyone else, there’s a part of me that really wants to see the Monsanto/Cargill/RJR Nabisco system crumble in the face of a renaissance of local food production (and by local, I mean the back yard as much as the “foodshed”). Holly over at henwaller wrote up a pretty good rant on just this subject today, I’d highly recommend giving it a read.

As for our inept leaders, well, we’ll always have those, but when people start feeling it in the pocketbook, they do tend to demand accountability from their politicians, even if it takes a little while and a lot of kicking and screaming. The prevailing wisdom is, of course, that Americans are complacent and apathetic and will eat their own young before getting off the couch and doing something productive, but we need only to look at the labor movements of the early 20th century to see what’s possible. Big Ag and the WTO can keep our politicians under their thumbs for only as long as people can afford to feed themselves. If South Americans can take back control of their lives, I see no reason to think that North Americans can’t eventually do the same.

Hope the girl’s faring well. Cheers!