I saw 2.89/2.99/3.09 today and there didn't seem to be any fewer cars on the road or more people on my bus.
When I lived in Mississippi years ago, Wal-Mart was busy opening modest sized stores just outside each downtown and running each store at a loss long enough to drive the competitors out of business. Wal-Mart later closed a lot of them and built one big store to replace 3-4 of the small town stores built 20-30 years ago. I noticed the dead rural downtowns when I was back in Mississippi several years ago.
Wal-Mart's business model is dependent on customers burning lots of cheap gas to travel much further to megastores to buy stuff shipped from the opposite side of the planet. It'll never be like it was, but maybe there'll be some demand for small, locally-owned stores if customers don't want to spend $10 or more on gas to travel to a Wal-Mart in the next county. I think that would be a good thing.
As for farming, family farmers have been replaced by high input corporate agriculture, which only has a competitive advantage if energy prices are low. Higher energy prices won't return farming to some kind of Norman Rockwell painting, but it'll make some major changes and I think many will be positive. It certainly should be a big boost to grow food outside of Florida and California.
A lot of places once had thriving berry, tomato, and other perishable food farmers who were obliterated by produce trucked in from across the country. If the price to supply California strawberries or Washington apples rises enough, people elsewhere can make a living growing them. I see that as a good thing too. Especially because of the enormous subsidies that to provide water for corporate agriculture.
I'm a socialist now, but I was too far to the right to vote for Reagan in 1980 and have never lost my dislike of the inefficiencies that result from subsidies. I now think they're worthwhile when they are done to further a social good, but putting local producers and retailers out of business isn't good. Neither is encouraging people to have big houses or long commutes. The price of petroleum needs to include all the costs of providing it, especially the monumental military expenditures focused on safeguarding the supply.
If people want to drive past a local store to shop in a distant Wal-Mart, it's their right. But they need to pay the real cost to get there. And if they want to buy something made 10,000 miles away instead of something made 500 miles away, that's their right too. But they need to pay the real cost to transport it. Rural America was healthy when real energy and transportation costs were higher. And Americans were healthier when the real cost of calories rural America produced was higher.