I mostly shop at Costco and am not struggling so maybe my perspective is skewed but it seems like food prices have been coming down recently, and I haven't noticed any shortages. If you think it feels like things are being covered up that sounds a little paranoid and conspiratorial to me, food distribution in the US is a huge and complicated system involving a whole lot of people, it seems completely implausible that a cover up of a major food crisis would even be possible. There's just too many people who would notice (and there isn't any kind of centralized hierarchy involved that could pull something like that off). I don't see the relevance of shale oil production, the US produces plenty of oil to be both self sufficient and one of the largest oil exporters in the world. If you're concerned the US doesn't have enough oil or something like that you really shouldn't be.