It looks like the world's harvest will be reduced also: the weather has just been too different this year. The Northern Midwest has flooded where it is usually dry, and late frosts have pushed the planting of grain so late in the year that some areas might not get much of a harvest. Some areas, like the part of Kansas where I live, ought to get a crop but I suspect that much the Northern areas in the Nation will see their crops get frosted before they are mature
Now we are a first-world nation, and so I do not expect hunger in the USA. Rising prices, yes, especially for meat, but not hunger. Still, higher prices for meat may make things hard for many.
One solution for the high price of meat can be found in the blue collar recipes for every nation. The Orientals invented stir-fry because it stretched expensive meat and used very little expensive fuel. The people in South America did not bake their bread for half an hour in a hot oven: instead they cooked tortillas for 30 seconds on each side which conserved fuel, and then they added beans and such to their burrito filling to stretch their meat so that everybody got some. And, traditional African recipes often call for boiling the meat into a hearty soup, which not only tenderizes tough meat but also stretches the meat to feed a family
The "Frugal Gourmet" was right: Everybody likes to eat well and so the working class of every nation on Earth has learned to make delicious meals by using a lot of the foods that were cheap in their area. And, with the way that food prices will probably go up in the next couple of years these hearty, blue-collar recipes should be able to save us a lot on the food bill.
Now I am a gardener. The vegetables from my garden, with the addition of soy sauce, makes a wonderful stir-fry. The contents of that stir-fry will vary with the seasons: right now I have a lot of string beans, onions, and potatos and when the cooler Fall weather comes then I shall have cabbage as well. Or, the veggies with a 12 ounce can of meat will make a gallon of soup, which I can serve with bread or corn bread. Speaking of corn bread, my husband's Southern ancestors ate their cornbread with black eyed peas, and yes I have a couple of recipes for those peas.
My English recipe of steak and kidney pie (made without the kidneys) went over very well, and my family was full after eating just half of the meat that they were used to eating. The same thing happened when I made Cornish pasties. And, "bubble and squeak " soup uses far less meat that America's traditional fried chicken.
Blue collar workers across the world need to eat hearty meals, and they also need to eat inexpensively. Every nation on Earth has a full set of recipes to fill that need. Knowing how to cook with the stored food is a very fine thing, but so is knowing how to cook with the inexpensive foods that are available fresh, And, so, I have made it a point to learn to prepare inexpensive working class meals from around he world. Because I would far rather eat ham and bean soup with cornbread than eat freeze-dried foods. Both have their place in the scheme of things, but, I would rather eat the freshly prepared ham and bean soup
Good depression-era recipes can be found on youtube here:
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gre...n+cooking+with+clara
And, very good working class ethnic recipes can be found in the first few "frugal Gourmet" books. In the later books he ran out of frugal ethnic recipes, but the first few books are full of recipes that can be fixed very cheaply from the foods that were cheap in that area. Mind, the fish that is so cheap in a town next to the ocean might be far more expensive to a cook tho is located in the middle of the continent, but the recipes in his book are delicious meals that were affordable to the locals. Your mileage may vary.
Basically, I am trying to say that when food prices go up that a very good solution is found in the kitchen. And, in 6 months to a year's time I expect that food prices will go up, especially the cost of animal products as, in this country, livestock eats a great deal of corn
