There have been many “bread riots.”
Governments are concerned with this because no meat (or rice) on supermarket shelves during a supply-shock of any kind leads to rapid unplanned regimechange very consistently.
So basically every western government throws a few billions a year at local farmers so they stay (and this is not a US phenomenon, EU does the exact same thing). This is also less necessary for countries where labor is cheap.
This is arguably good for most consumers because essential calories being more affordable "on average" is not good enough, you'd typically rather pay (partially indirectly) a higher average to guarantee availability and avoid starving.
But what happens when you suddenly start giving a bunch of people the ability to go arbitrarily far into debt to buy something that they perceive as priceless (because housing, and most any other 'thing' tends to endlessly appreciate in value in an inflationary economic system)? Obviously prices skyrocket. The exact same thing happened with education for the exact same reason.
The answer- essentials can never be a non-government interferring market. This can be by creating artifical oversupply by buying up oversupply for foreign aid or bio fuels(food production). In the case of housing, this is by having the goverment continually construct housing.