Perspectives:
As American historian Will Durant observed, at the end of the day civilization depends upon the food supply. As our food supply grows increasingly uncertain at every level, putting up food is the embodiment of, “Thinking globally acting locally.”
For months during the COVID pandemic local stores around the country were intermittently out of basic staples like flour, dairy products, meats…Photos below are Juneau’s major food stores taken the same week.
Local: Your Own Home:
1) You may get sick or hurt: If you’re the one who keeps food on your family table, the family is in trouble until you mend.
2) Broken Home: Years before I got to know her, a friend of mine divorced her abusive husband. She had three kids to care for, no money, her monthly expenses were higher than her income, the bum wasn’t reliable with child support. What she had going for her was a tough upbringing where food and money were tight. She’d learned to preserve and store food. When she cut the cord, that stored food was what she and her children lived on for the first three months until she got on her feet.
3) Rising Costs/Falling Family Incomes: If you do the shopping at your house you don’t need me to tell you food inflation spiked 11% in 2022. On top of that, fifty years ago 61% of American households were middle-class. Today the middle-class is 42%–almost certainly an over estimate. As salaries and health/retirement benefits disappear, the middle class is on a downward spiral of paying more and more for to less and less nutritious food.
4) You may get fired/laid off/downsized/or otherwise canned
5) Pandemics: In addition to food, consider how you’ll preserve it if you can find it. During Covid, stores in our town sold out of things like canning jars and lids, freezer bags, yeast, pickling supplies…
National: Your own country
A) Rich People and Foreign Countries Own Most of America’s (and the world’s) Food Supply–don’t pretend they care about feeding you: Billionaires and foreign countries control or own outright much, if not most, of America’s farmlands, range lands, forestry, and commercial fisheries. Bill Gates’ agricultural holdings make him the largest land owner in America. China owns the largest hog farms in America. As Arizona burns up in drought, Saudi Arabia is pumping down Arizona’s dwindling water supply to grow alfalfa for Saudi livestock….and so on.
B) Cascadia Earthquake: aka ‘The Big One’
The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs from the coast of California to British Columbia. The geologic record shows that this fault shifts violently every 250 years or so. The last time was in 1700 meaning The Big One is about 70 years overdue. The 1700 earthquake and ensuing tsunami wiped out villages as far away as Japan. In fact, the epicenter was so distant the Japanese had no warning at all until the wave hit. You can read about it in Kathryn Shultz’s fine article in ‘The Atlantic’ linked below. The take-away for us in Southeast Alaska is a quote from FEMA’s Pacific Northwest Director Kenneth Murphy “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” Among other things, the barge lines that bring food and fuel to Alaska are west of I-5. In addition, if Seattle is devastated, we in Alaska won’t be the top priority for relief.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
C) Drought: desiccated crops and range lands: Drought has become an annual expectation as our planet warms. If you don’t believe in global warming, no problem: drought doesn’t care. You can follow along with the Drought Monitor.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
D) Drought: transport problems: 60% of America’s grain exports travel down the Mississippi River. In 2023 the river was so low grain barges couldn’t fill up because that would make them heavy enough to ground out. Worse, they couldn’t string as many barges together as they usually do. The Illinois and Ohio Rivers were also too low to carry regular loads. Barge companies that can’t carry full loads pass the expense of using more barges to farmers who are already hammered from losing crops to drought. This affects both domestic and foreign grain trade.
E) National Debt is about 34 Trillion dollars: Get over that ‘We’re too big to fail’ baloney. 34 trillion is a number like they use to measure galaxies. It’s so big even people who work with such numbers can’t fully grasp them. So, if the whole house of cards comes tumbling down your pension, welfare, unemployment are all out the window.
The World: We have arrived at the 1970’s maxim: “The ultimate obscenity will occur when half the world watches the other half starve to death on television.”
1) Vulnerable Water ways:
Suez Canal: 12 % of world trade goes through the Suez Canal. In 2021 a quarter mile long cargo ship The Ever Given grounded out across the Suez completely blocking traffic in both directions, and causing a traffic jam of hundreds of cargo ships at either end of the water way for 6 days until she could be pried loose.
Panama Canal: 40% of all US container traffic travels though the Panama Canal. 73% of traffic in the Panama Canal is US commodities imports and exports. Transport through the Canal depends on filling the locks with water from a fresh water lake in the middle. That lake is drying up. To conserve water the Panama Canal Authority is allowing less water into the locks. Less water means the Canal isn’t as deep. Shallow water means cargo ships–like bulk grain carriers–have to carry lighter loads. Which means shippers have to use extra ships. Which means longer lines at either end of the Canal. Delay times in summer of 2023 averaged about two and a half days. All of which increases cost.
2) War and Conflicts:
Hot zones all over Africa, parts of Asia, Europe, Latin America, and South America. They involve all nations on earth directly or indirectly. Been going on for years. Here are a few:
War: between Ukraine and Russia, two of the world’s largest wheat supplies has caused a massive swings in grain prices around the world, especially in Northern Africa including for Egypt’s 110 million people where over 80% of the population is on food subsidies. This war pits rich countries against poor ones for available grain supplies.
War: between Israel and Palestine, the Jewish State has cut off food and fresh water to 2.3 million Palestinians. Half of them are children. 50,000 of them are pregnant women. What little food is available is what people were able to stock before Israel began bombing Gaza. *Update January 2024. Famine has emerged in Gaza. This has global impacts, not least of which are that Houthi fighters supporting Gaza have shown a fundamental weakness of long-distance food chains and of the ability of world navies to protect them. They’ve cut shipping in the Red Sea to a trickle by attacking merchant ships with two thousand dollar drones which the US Navy shoots down with two million dollar missiles. Totally unsustainable for the US and all the Houthi have to do is watch the USN ships empty their magazines until the ships must leave to rearm.
BRICS (see below) is using the Gaza genocide as a recruiting tool to bring other countries to its organization.
Conflict: between Ethiopian government and separatists: Ethiopian government cut off food supplies. 600,000 have killed. Most by starvation. Combination of drought and violence.
Conflict: between the Hutu and Tutsi Rwanda, one of the fastest genocides in history. In 1994 roughly a million people killed in 100 days.
3) The World Food Supply depends on Petroleum and Petroleum is Finite*
It’s been estimated that every food calorie on an American table took 10 petroleum calories to get there. In the fields, humanity grows crops with petroleum based fertilizers, and it uses petroleum driven irrigation pumps, tractors, harvesting combines, refrigeration, truck transport, ship transport, air transport…
The world uses over 97 million barrels of oil per day (42 gallons per barrel). At this point there’s no viable Plan B.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
*This also applies to hunting and fishing which are a large but generally unacknowledged part of America’s food supply.
4) Every Empire in the History of the World Collapsed when it Outran Its Food Supply:
5) BRICS: Acronym for the alliance of a new economic and political colossus: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
A major goal of BRICS is to break the American dollar’s hegemony as the world monetary standard. They have to potential to do it, and if they do, stand by to tighten your belts campers. And! On January 1, 2024 five more countries will join Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE. [Argentina may also join]. Twenty other countries have already applied to join the BRICS alliance. As a group, they don’t like America. Most of them have good reason not to.