The Washington Independent’s finance reporter Mary Kane asks an important question today amid the global food crisis: are we facing the end of cheap food? Mary explains that the long-term rise in standard of living in the U.S. has been tied directly to low food costs. (When your morning corn flakes are dirt cheap you have more money to spend at big box stores, on a car, etc.) The end of low-cost food could also prove disastrous in efforts to fight poverty in the developing world.