Food Shortages & Price Increases Ahead?

[chemisttree]

I don’t think there is one. Very unlikely that a company geared toward institutional sales would maintain an equivalent capacity or a flexible capacity to produce product for sale at retail stores. Even if they could, they would all be shut down anyway. Labor intensive work slaughtering animals.

Much more likely that someone could use produce or grains than animal products, though. An adaptable and rapid method for preserving the food value of vegetable products seems like a golden opportunity right now. How complicated would a large scale dehydration facility be? Could you build one as fast as a field hospital?

 

[hmmm27]

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But not hard-lemonade. Some alcoholic beverage producers have regeared to producing ethyl alcohol-based sanitation products.

Notwithstanding that their switchover environment is near monolithic in nature , as opposed to the active cooperation between companies necessary to rejig foodstuffs supply chain, it's a bit annoying that spirits' manufacturers seem to be the only ones with the organizational wherewithal to be useful to society, while maintaining their bottom line.

It is suggested that food overages could raise the overall health of the homeless and near destitute, their improved health somewhat mitigating future cost to society ;

Fatten up some zoo-bound animals ;

Produce veritable lakes of soylent-beige.

When producers can't get products to market... Shades of the "Irish Potato Famine," very local, gone global.

That famine lasted four years, killed off over a million people, and was directly responsible for the emigration of a million more.

Not being able to sit down and "enjoy" a Big Mac isn't exactly in the same ballpark. Apart from the visual of fields going fallow, an actual parallel might be to the US system that pays farmers not to grow stuff (of which I am at most only vaguely aware).

 

[Klystron]

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But not hard-lemonade. Some alcoholic beverage producers have regeared to producing ethyl alcohol-based sanitation products.

A reminder that fermentation represented an excellent long term storage solution for excess grain and fruit that would otherwise spoil. Ethyl alcohol content also provided a safer hydration alternative to historical common water sources.

That famine lasted four years, killed off over a million people, and was directly responsible for the emigration of a million more.

With the effects of the "blight" exacerbated by forced mono-culture from absent land owners, hateful politics and deliberate neglect; the last two ideas still prevalent.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

There may be some increase in expense and some supply chain issues.

But I doubt the average BMI of Americans will be lower a year from now than it is now.

I can't look at countries where so many poor people are fat through the same lens as countries where most poor people are skinny.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Back when the Y2K bug was looming, I read a book called "Farming for Self-Sufficiency" and also studied and began doing some small scale food preservation and storage for our household. Another book I found useful in preparing for various TEOTWAWKI scenarious is "Where There Is No Doctor."

Our household is nowhere near true self-sufficiency in either food or medical care, but we are capable of a higher level of independence for a longer duration than most US households. Whether one is preparing for a winter storm or a hurricane that can knock out power and interrupt supply chains for a couple weeks, or perhaps preparing for a longer supply chain interruption, many of the principles are similar.

Many hunters think there'll be plenty of large game available to feed families indefinitely if grocery store shelves are bare. But a careful look at the math suggests a lot of the most commonly hunted game can't feed millions of Americans for very long. Being able to effectively trap smaller animals that fewer people are targeting will likely provide protein for longer. There is a program on BlazeTV called "In the Quarantine with Phil (Robertson)" where more practical skills are discussed in a more helpful level of detail.

But most of the time, a given acreage of land will provide more food if carefully cultivated and used for plant-based nutrition than if used for animal-based nutrition. Sadly, most Americans no longer have the knowledge and skills to extract the nutritional potential from a few acres of land. I don't think the current "crisis" will be the one that pushes America back to needing to do that. But if one looks at world history, continuous supply chains for hundreds of years are relatively rare events. Odds are good that at some point in the next generation or two, supply chains in the US will be significantly interrupted for more than a couple weeks.

 

[TeethWhitener]

Sadly, most Americans no longer have the knowledge and skills to extract the nutritional potential from a few acres of land.

Most Americans don’t have a few acres of land, so there’s no reason to expect them to retain such knowledge.