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By Emanuel Balarie

With all the talk about housing, a declining US Dollar, and the inevitable recession, many people may be overlooking a potentially more devastating economic factor, writes Emanuel Balarie of CommodityNewsCenter.com rising food costs.

I wrote several months ago on this global food inflation now food prices are even higher now than when the article was first published in Sept. '07. You can see the impact even in the local food market here in southern California.

I was visiting my parents and we decided to go to the store to pick up some food for a barbeque. I was surprised to see the supermarket absolutely packed at 1:30pm on a Thursday afternoon.

There were probably 5 or 6 cashiers and each cashier had a line that went back 25 people deep. My father, who grew up in communist Romania, said this reminded him of the bread lines during the Ceausescu era! And as I looked around the store, I realized that about 80% of the people lined up only had 4 items in their carts.

Those 4 items, I quickly found out, were advertised on a flyer touting an 8 hour only sale . We ended up waiting in line for about a half hour.

I would guess the net savings for those 4 items were around $10 $15. That doesn't seem like a lot of money. Yet the shoppers were willing to change their shopping schedules, wait in line for 30 minutes, and perhaps even purchase food items that were not necessarily on their usual shopping lists.

Why is that?

Now I have to admit the market was located in a blue collar neighborhood. However, this does not take away from the fact that my father, who shops at the store regularly, has never experienced this before. In addition, economic hardship is first noticed by the lower and middle classes. These families typically do not have much money saved up, and their paychecks often only cover their mortgage, car payments and bills, leaving them particularly exposed in the event of an economic contraction.

Even though it starts at the bottom, however, you better believe the hardships of the lower class will affect the middle class soon. For instance, Mr. Blue Collar might not go out to eat at the local neighborhood restaurant. Now the local restaurant owner experiences the slowdown and he may decide to layoff one of his employees.

Additionally, he will decide to keep his used truck several years longer. So now the car dealer and their salesmen will suffer from decreased sales...and so on.