We’ve been noticing that we are paying more to stock our freezers and refrigerators with grocery store food — 75 percent more in the last 10 years. That figure should shock us. But I am not sure we are paying attention.

Simultaneously and related, these changes in food prices have governments facing riots born of hunger while our current administration gives Monsanto free reign across the country to continue their resource gobbling Big Ag practices with unproven safety of GMOs and no possible recourse for consumer protection in court.

Simultaneously the products Monsanto helps produce keep obesity on the rise while poorer nations are facing greater shortages. Diabetes and heart disease are on the rise, — proven diseases of poor nutrition — and fresh water is fast becoming rare.

But here’s the good news: when we care about where our food comes from (and there are a lot of us out here), we can have a hand in making food for the future clean, good and fair for all. We have to. We no longer have a choice.

Small family farming is going through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and flavorful. The change is being pushed along by market forces that influence how our farmers farm. Thank you consumers! Thank you for asking, “Where does my food come from?” Thank you for  buying from small, local, sustainable-practice growers in our local marketplaces. That’s good for our local environment, health and small economies.

Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its fixation on massive yields and government subsidy. A main reason globalized manufactured food products seem cheap is because by the time it hits the grocery store aisles, they are already paid for by us, the taxpayers, through government subsidies that help control the food marketplace.

But there’s a cost to “cheap food” and it is high. Costs show up in dozens of related places. Like those big Industrial Age factories that belched black smoke, American agriculture is stuck in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on foreign fuels and energies, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, distance traveled and processing techniques.

For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if they don’t feed more people, who will? “We feed the masses cheaply and on less land. How bad can that be?”

Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil up vastly over the decade, small and midsize non-polluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer. Thank you! Thank you consumers who ask, “Where does my food come from and what is its true cost in the world?”

In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costs on the rise, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown.

The high cost of oil alone will not be enough to reform American agriculture, however. As long as agricultural companies exploit the poor and extract labor from them at low wages, and as long as they aren’t required to pay the price for the pollution they so shamelessly produce, their system will stay afloat. If financially pinched Americans opt for the cheapest (and the least healthful) foods rather than cook their own, the food industry will continue to reach for the low hanging fruit.

We can push the revolution along — for instance, by changing how we measure the value of food. If we stop calculating the cost per quantity and begin considering the cost per nutrient value, the demand for higher-quality food would rise.

Organic fruits and vegetables contain 40 percent more nutrients than their chemical-fed counterparts. And animals raised on pasture provide us with meat and dairy products containing more beta carotene and at least three times as much C.L.A. (conjugated linoleic acid, shown in animal studies to reduce the risk of cancer) than those raised on grain.

Where good nutrition goes, flavor tends to follow. Let’s pay attention to the facts and in this election year, let’s continue to learn how to make small and medium sized farms successful and support them every way, as  a community, that we can.