...all the pieces are coming together. Only two countries in the world are still exporting their rice, and they only have a few weeks of it left (reference). In some places the price of wheat's gone up 130% since last year. Corn is being grown for biofuel instead of food while the world's population is increasing by 70M every year (reference: US Census Bureau)... Demand for food and for energy is skyrocketing while we have gone over the peak of oil production (probably around 2005 - reference).
Even if we all vanished from the face of the planet today, and industry came to a screeching halt, the planet would still keep heating up and changing dramatically for at least a couple hundred years. (see diagram from the Times Online,
Add to that that in Canada the food on our plates travels an average of about 5000km, and even before factoring that in every calorie we consume represents about 10 calories of energy in its production. Our supply of fresh water is in serious jeopardy (why do they use thousands of gallons of fresh water with every car they manufacture? and did you know that our use of road salt is causing the great lakes to become saline?), and even with all the awareness about climate change sales of SUVs were at their highest ever in 2007... it seems to me that the momentum of humanity is too great for us to be able to avert our inevitable demise as a species.
True, we have all kinds of solutions in the works, but the majority of them are short-sighted and rely just as much on our current modes of production (i.e. petrochemicals) as anything else: solar panels and wind turbines are made from petrochemicals, using petroleum and coal as fuel for production, ethanol and biofuels use up more energy in their production than they can give, and they replace much-needed food crops... Monsanto is buying up all the seed on the continent so they can control what gets planted and what doesn't, eliminating entire families of lesser-known plants, engineering food crops such that a) they will not self-seed (the so-called "terminator seeds") and b) they can only be controlled by Monsanto-produced chemical pesticides and fertilizers... [NB when this fails and these weak, sub-standard crops they're producing succumb to some previously unknown disease, there won't be anything left].
Even the naysayers are beginning to tip their hands: Exxon, for instance, recently said in a press release that yes, all the "easy oil" is gone, but we have decades of it left so stop worrying, but at the same time we'd all best conserve and use energy as efficiently as possible.
So rice prices, I believe, are the proverbial "canary in the coalmine." While you and I may not depend on rice as a dietary staple, its shortage and the crisis surrounding it foreshadow what we're in for: just today (24.04.08) it was reported that Costco and Sam's Club have put a limit on the amount of rice consumers are allowed to purchase per visit, and then at lunch the news broke that Canada Bread will be increasing its prices because of the higher price of wheat and lost revenues they suffered in the first quarter of this year. But rising grain prices have already meant losses in other related sectors, like and chicken hog production (reference), and rising oil prices will mean higher food prices overall, to cover the cost of transport.
so, to recap: shortages currently include oil, food, and water.