t As prices for all food rises, organic and local food will start to seem like a bargain.

Today at Thriftway, I saw that standard, non-organic eggs were $2.99 a dozen and my pinto beans over $1.25 a pound. Never mind about dairy products!

I’m worried about food prices, and considering last week’s excellent and thought-provoking article by Leslie Brown, I’m not the only one.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by where food comes from and how it finds its way onto our plates. It was about five years ago that I began wanting to buy local, organic food, but when I looked at the prices — wow — I couldn’t afford that!

That food was for rich people, and I felt that the local farmers were catering to an elite group and leaving the rest of us — in the low- to middle-income group — out. That was when I got very serious about my garden. I would beat those farmers at their own game.

Thus began my real education about food. To make a long story short, after reading many books about food and where it comes from, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (Polan: 2006), “Holy Cows and Hog Heaven” (Salatin: 2005), “Plenty” (Smith and Mackinnon: 2007) and others, my beliefs about the sources, quality and cost of our foods changed dramatically.

About a year ago, it became clear to me that the cost of organic food is not going to come down. All the other petrochemical-fertilized food will become so expensive that local, organic food will be a bargain.

Several things are happening at once in the global food economy to cause a “perfect storm” of escalating food prices. We all know about global climate change, population growth, rising transportation costs and the diversion of corn to ethanol production, but there’s more:

High export demand for corn, soybeans, wheat and hay (crops that feed animals and rely on the most farming acreage) as well as other crops are causing demand to exceed production, resulting in price spikes.

Each year there is an increasing shortfall in the global production of cereal grains.

Economic growth in other countries — especially China and India — is resulting in a growing global demand for food.

Agricultural land is rapidly being lost to urban sprawl — a million new homes annually displace some of the best farmland in America.

Since there does not seem to be an end in sight for any of these precedents, it is time for us consumers to take control of our food security. We can take some steps to ease the impending crisis:

Recognize that the days of spending less than 10 percent of our income on food are over. We will be joining the rest of the world, where most citizens spend 15 to 25 percent or more on food.

This may mean giving up some luxuries that we have almost come to see as necessities — fast food, entertainment products, the latest electronic gadget or software.

Purchase as much locally grown and/or organic food as you can afford. Ease into these purchases — each week add a new local or organic food to your basket. Before long, you will find that you are a supporter of local agriculture.

Cook more, eat out less. Learn how to prepare meals that are simple, satisfying and inexpensive. Meals do not have to be time-consuming to be good.

Use meat as a side dish or accent. Eat more plants.

Start or expand a food garden. Crops that will add significant calories to your larder are potatoes, beans and squash. Luckily, they are some of the easiest to grow.

Also, consider acquiring a few laying hens. Last year, I finally acquired six hens, and it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time. I smugly passed those $3 eggs today and came home to collect four fresh, very local eggs from my own flock. Few things are more satisfying than growing your own food.

Educate yourself about where your food comes from and what it goes through before it finds its way to your plate. The books listed above are a great start.

There is so much more we can do, and Vashon will be exploring many solutions to the impending food crisis in the coming months. (See the box below.) Join us as we embark on a journey down the path of food self-sufficiency and security. It will be up to us to decide with our actions whether the coming food crisis is a storm or a cataclysm.

— Cathy Fulton grows much of her own food and is experimenting with aquaponics, a way of raising fish and vegetables symbiotically.