You saw the headlines this week, food prices are on the rise all across the nation. Headlines from the mainstream media read “Attention Shoppers: Fruit and Vegetable Prices Are Rising” or “Sticker shock at the steak house; beef prices highest in 27 years” and “Rising food, housing costs push up U.S. inflation“. The prices are being blamed on the drought in California and “inflation”. Inflation: is it what they keep saying it is? We’ll get into that later. Thumbnail credit: kgi.org

Either through mother nature disrupting commercial crops, or inflation undermining our purchasing power at the pump and at the grocery store, the need to grow a garden at your home and/or in your community has never been greater.  Let’s look at food prices. Here’s a chart that was posted by the WSJ on Tuesday:

As you can see from this graphic, many staple food crops are on the rise, with expectations that the prices could go even higher. These prices are being blamed on the drought and an extra long cold winter in the East, but these prices are just symptoms of the bigger problem which is an over-centralized food system. When the entire nation depends on only a few sources for the majority of their food supplies, the prices and availability could vary greatly if the areas where these crops are mass produced are affected by weather events. This is why you should start a garden. If you can start to source some or all of your food from your own garden, a community garden, or at least locally grown, you can dampen the effects of bad weather on your food supply and food costs.

Add into this equation the surging gas prices. A recent headline from the LA Times says “Gasoline prices jump in California as refineries encounter trouble“, but isn’t that what they always say? Why does the media never talk about real inflation, which should include the prices of food and gas? Are we to believe that something as simple as a few problems at a refinery are responsible for for a massive increase in gas prices? How long have they been refining gas? Can they not figure out how to do it more efficiently, or is there another reason why gas prices have gone higher? Let’s see. Here is a graph of gas prices from 1979 until now with a few notes that I added to show where our inflation is coming from:

UPDATE: Notice the correlation between world food prices and gas prices. Both prices fluctuate for the same reasons, however most times are blamed on regional issues and weather. Chart from earth-policy.org

You see, when the bankers crashed our economy, they were bailed out largely at the cost of the average American’s purchasing power. Add to that America’s longest war which we didn’t have the money for. Turn on the printing presses. Every time you add a new dollar into the system, the rest of the dollars get watered down. While the average Joe has less purchasing power now than they did before 9/11, the average billionaire has seen an exponential increase in their purchasing power and overall wealth. This is due to the nature of a fiat currency system, which always benefits those closer to where the money is being created out of thin air(Wall Street). This money is not backed by anything of value like gold, silver or other assets. The only backing to this ‘global reserve currency’ is the power of the US military and allies who are willing to kill to keep the system in place.

It’s not really that our food and gas prices are rising, but more like the value of our money is getting watered down by the Federal Reserve and loose monetary policy. Keep in mind that when fuel prices are higher, food prices will no doubt also go higher because most Americans rely on food that is shipped from out of the state or out of the country. This is why you should start a garden.

Here is a simple chart that explains how the rich have benefited from recent monetary policy. The working classes have had stagnant wealth while also dealing with increased staple prices, resulting in lower actual incomes when adjusted for inflation:

Hopefully after reading this, you’ll understand that food and fuel prices go much deeper than a drought and a refinery being shut down for maintenance. Don’t let the mainstream media fool you, the “economic recovery” has only taken effect for the very rich, housing prices are up nearly 20% in some places while home ownership is actually down, signaling a re-inflating housing bubble, this time created almost entirely off the back of a fake economy being propped up by monetary stimulus.

If nothing else, start a garden to at least insulate your family from regressive government polices and out of control bankers, they will thank you later.

This article is free to republish under a Creative Commons license with attribution to WeSupportOrganic.com