I was wondering when this was going to happen (h/t to Suburban Guerilla):

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

“You can’t eat this every day. It’s too heavy,” a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. “We only need one bag but I’m getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it,” the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

“Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Part of the issue is that in the face of rice shortages, Asian nations have begun rationing exports. California, one of the nation’s leading rice-growing states, has seen problems with rice production, especially with seawater intrusion in rice paddies in the Delta.

And although the article focuses on rice, it also notes problems with grains. Grain shortages have hit the rest of the globe hard, causing riots in Haiti and severe bread shortages in Egypt. Americans used to believe themselves to be immune to such “third world” disasters but our sense of privilege isn’t going to save us. Climate change, the idiotic biofuels policy, and financial speculation in commodities are all contributing to the shortages, and it’s only a matter of time before Californians face growing problems with the food supply.

Because agricultural policy is largely in federal hands it’s not clear what we can do at the state level to help mitigate this worsening problem. Advocacy around the national Farm Bill – still under debate in the US Senate – might be the best approach. Increased attention to levee repair in the Delta would be useful too.

Perhaps the best thing we can do here in California, though, is encourage local food production and consumption networks. Most towns now have farmers markets, and many folks (like me) subscribe to a local CSA. The next step would be to encourage community gardens for food production. It worked in World War II with the victory gardens and would be useful today – but will require state support, especially to secure rights to land on which to grow crops, and to override idiotic limits on gardens in various planned suburbs.

This is also ultimately an argument against the bad Prop 98 – cities need to be able to use eminent domain to take vacant or abandoned land and turn it over to the public for local food production. Prop 98 would severely limit the ability of cities to do this.

Sure, we may think Costco’s abundance is limitless, but we’re finding out that it is not, and we had better start preparing to do without it.