There are lots of reasons to keep a pantry well stocked.  Out here, it is simply logical.  We are a 40 mile round trip from the nearest grocery store, so just hopping in the car like a happy suburbanite to go grab a box of cereal because you ran out, simply isn’t feasible.  Stuff happens.  People come down with the flu or have surgery (hmm…) so they can’t shop, cars break down, the zombies are in the streets, or like just recently, a monster land hurricane descends upon you and you couldn’t get to the store if your life depended on it.  For far too many people, their lives indeed do depend on it.  But it need not be a complete dependence.

Being the ex-financial guy, my biggest concern is the fragility of our economy.  When the next crash happens, to quote Nomi Prins, “We will be falling from a higher height”.  Our debt loads alone are stratospheric and in a world of rising interest rates, this will likely end badly.  I imagine a time when all the Diesel trucks stop running and city folks sit and wonder what happened to all the mama birds that were supposed to bring in the chips, snack cakes, and candy to the 7/11.  Understand that I’m not faulting folks for living in urban/suburban areas, but it is a fatally flawed system.  It is a trap that most will find themselves in should the excrement hit the moving oscillator.  Rural folks will have their issues too.  Isolation being a big one.  Most farms today don’t grow food they can actually eat.  Everything needs to be processed and that takes energy, fuel, and resources – All of which contribute to an earth where biblical floods inundate the very landscape that is needed to produce food so folks can get out and buy Apples (notice the cap denoting a name not an item).

Seriously though, given just general demand and inflation pressures, food will never be as cheap as it is now.  The article pasted below came from a pen pal.  I’ve been watching this story unfold since the cyclone hit us last week.  I read that one third of the country (mostly in the breadbasket) are at high risk for record flooding.  It’s already started.  What that means is that farmers can’t get in their fields to plant all the corn and soybeans (and some wheat) to grow food to produce steaks, cheeseburgers, Nachos, Little Debbie’s snack cakes,  vegetable oils and the corn syrup for tasty sugary beverages.  Just look sometime and do a search about how many items consumed in this country are made with corn.   Virtually everything.  We are made of corn.

So it stands to reason, that if corn can’t get planted, feed lots get flooded, and industrial meat producers have to pay more for feed, that we are in for one doozy of a spike in food prices.  If the flooding further erodes the topsoil, fuel prices will rise because of the increased demand for fertilizers.  This isn’t some Doomsday Prepper nonsense.  This is happening right now.  This is how it happens.  We won’t suffer because it got too hot for us.  We will suffer because the change in climate destroyed our habitat.

This also will see a spike in farm bankruptcies, many of whom are being tortured by an insane and unnecessary trade war with a willing and eager soybean purchaser, which will lead to a decline in machinery sales, etc, etc, etc.  Agriculture is the primary string in a very complexly woven Gordian Knot.

Enough rant.  I need to get to the feed store to buy a few more bags of corn; maybe some more rice.  Beans.  Always need more beans.  Perhaps I’ll splurge and buy a bag of Doritos.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/catastrophic-flooding-in-the-midwest-could-last-for-months-and-that-is-going-to-mean-a-dramatic-drop-in-u-s-food-production