 18 fires at American food processing facilities in the past six months. Is it an attack on our food supply? A conspiracy? Some people certainly seem to think so. Lots of social media users are suggesting that this is all part of a plot to starve Americans. The thing is about a half a million fires happen in the United States every year and the country has well over 36,000 food processing plants. So it's actually not that suspicious that less than two dozen might have problems over the course of several months. There are dozens of us. Dozens! What's more, some of these fires caused minimal damage and one was even at an abandoned facility. There's no reason to buy into conspiracies. The real reason food is becoming more expensive is not nearly so dramatic. It's a highly predictable result of bad policy. Months of mandatory business closures, USDA restrictions, an unprecedented expansion of the money supply and an explosion in government spending, that'll do it.