Food Insecurity
2022-05-30
There’s a number of reasons to believe that this winter, we’ll see a combination of food shortages and price increases which might double the current price of food. This is a short musing on the possibility of that, and what an apartment-dweller can do about it.
Sounds unlikely
I’ve been around long enough to have seen quite a lot of doomsayers who believed wholeheartedly that there was going to be any number of awful scenarios. There are a number of annoying people I know who skip from one terrible prediction to another without ever looking back to see if any of them were right.
So i get it, this sounds like that, right?
But, four things have happened recently which make me believe it.
- Gas Prices
- Negative gas prices in 2020, caused by overproduction and reduced demand, this means that the entire industry went in the red for a year or two, and it’s now time for them to pay back what they owe - in the form of increased oil prices. To say nothing of fracking bans, inflation in general, and the following intertwined problems.
- Biofascist lockdowns from 2020-2022
- Causing a supply chain disruption that has still not fully corrected itself.
- Wild government spending from 2020-present
- About 40% of the US GDP was spent directly by the federal government in 2021. The blistering pace of borrowing and printing of money has inflated the currency from the start, but price inflation has only started striking consumers in the last 6 months, and has no sign of stopping soon.
- Irresponsible sanctions against Russia
- Russia exports somewhere around 20% of the fertilizer used in the US, and the war started in the spring. Less fertilizer available for higher prices means, of course, that the food grown during that time will need to be sold at a higher price in October.
Note that the first three are "chain" issues, meaning that they affect every stage of the process. Gas prices drive up the cost of both raw materials getting to the fields, but also the harvest itself (which is mechanized) and the shipping of products through distribution channels. Increased cost of, well, everything means that all other operational costs are driven up as well.
That’s about as deeply as i’ll go for now, but starting in february I began to worry about it. Now, I’m certain it’ll occur.
What can be done
As I’ve noted in other pieces critical of "prepper" thinking, generic "buy stuff and hoard it" mentality doesn’t really get anyone through this. The first thing that has to be done is identify what the threat is (in this case, food prices doubling or more), how long the thread will be around (this isn’t yet known), and what the appropriate measures are to defend against it.
The length of time is the real variable here - assuming that October prices are double what they are today (which are 9% higher than last year), then it seems as if this shortage lasting around a year is to be expected. We would need to wait until the next growing season finishes to correct it, if that can be done. Unless we import foods from the southern hemisphere - whose growing period is our fall and winter. I’m not sure of the possible scope of this kind of import, so I won’t dwell on it. Let’s presume for our purposes that we’re looking at least six months worth of shortages and high prices.
In case it’s not clear, I’m not saying "eat only out of cans". I’m suggesting to soften the blow of higher prices by investing in preservable food today in order to not be as affected by higher prices tomorrow. In a similar vein to "buy low, sell high". My imagination envisions a situation where prices are out of control, fluctuating by the week, and when some things are available to buy those, and use canned foods to avoid paying prices that are too high for comfort.
Shopping list
| Staples | Ingred. | Seasoning | Meats | Dairy/egg | Canned | Essential | Comfort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| flour | garlic | consomme | sum. saug | chesse | corn | salt | coffee |
| cornmeal | pecans | boillion | bacon | proc. chz | tomato sc | d.vinegar | cocoa |
| oats | ginger | pepper | gaozi | milk pwdr | grn beans | honey | pnutbtr |
| rice | peppers | spam | soup base | olive oil | carmel | ||
| sugar | sprats | fruits | alcohols | ||||
| honey | butter | ||||||
| ramen | |||||||
| pasta | |||||||
| noodles | |||||||
| beans | |||||||
| swt. ptto |
Strategy
In an apartment, the freezer is barely 2cu feet, the fridge is around 4cu feet. There’s pantry space, but not a lot. We can’t easily rely on cooling to preserve food, and worse we’ll be stocking food during the summer, the hottest time, and when vegetables keep the worst.
We’re going to focus on staples, pickling, canned, salted, and dried food. Anything with a long shelf life, which can be cooked provided with the availability of potable water.
Staples
This is effectively, a list of all the "staple foods" one can get. Frankly, anything dry is preferred - pastas, rice, cornmeal, oats. But, flour keeps for some time (and can be trivially used to make sourdough bread). Potatoes and sweet potatoes are excellent for nutrition and quality of life, though their water content eventually leads to rot.
Meats
The single largest problem is preservation of meats. We’re going to lean on pre-cured, canned, and frozen meats here. It’s possible to salt-pack your own meat, or dry it in front of a window, but the smell will suck and it’s not foolproof. Something to consider, but not something to rely on yet.
Vegetables / Fruits
Canning is, to be frank, a fucking miracle. Canned fruits and vegetables might be the single most important section here. Fresh vegetables are, in my area, always the first to be sold out when there are shortages. Apartment space greatly limits growing area, and everything this far north would require a grow lamp; we just can’t feed anyone by growing.
Pickling could prove to be a bit of a superpower, but is greatly limited by space, vinegar, salt, and glassware. If we had a house i’d eagerly be starting pots of soy sauce, kimchi, sauerkraut, and anything else I could think of in German water-sealed ceramic pots. But, since none of that is really possible in an apartment, we’re stuck with old-fashioned "quick pickling" with lactofermentation. The biggest bottleneck of which is the glassware, which is already difficult to find.
Dairy / Eggs
Eggs can be pickled or preserved in a number of ways, notably with soy sauce, but they take up a surprising amount of space. Maybe a few are a good idea.
Dairy on the other hand has more options; butter is an essential, block cheese, processed cheeses, maybe milk powder. These will keep a long time, and make a lot of dishes palatable.
Alcohols
While it only holds a single line here, alcohols are damn useful. A drug, disinfectant, antiseptic, and "clean water" all in one is damn attractive. In the interest of space, liquors are to be preferred - I’d rather have ten bottles of 100 proof bourbon than 100 bottles of 10 proof beer - just in the interest of space. Alcohol can always be watered down, but its beneficial properties are highest in a purer form.
A note on mushrooms
Mushroom logs are relatively inexpensive, compact, require no light, a bit of water, can be refreshed with soil, and produce several crops. While it would never be a staple item, they’re one of the easiest things to grow in an apartment - and can be a fantastic fresh treat in a world of dried food.
We have oyster mushrooms that have produced 7-8 crops in 3 months, and had shiitake before that which did the same. Logs go for around $8 - $10 each, which over their life greatly outpaces the cost of storebought mushrooms.
Emergency Foods
You might be tempted to say, well, what about packaged meals? MRE’s and camping meals? Those are good meals, and are easy to make. But they’re designed to be lightweight and high-calorie, something to sustain active people for extended trips without being too heavy to manage. That is a nice feature, but you pay for it. Each one is going to be around $10 - $12, it’s much more expensive than any of the foods listed here. Good to have a few just in case, but i wouldn’t stock more than a dozen at a time per person.
There are sealed foods like Soylent which deserve a mention. Meal replacement drinks often keep quite long (when refridgerated) and supply an impressive amount of nutrients. The flavors are generally quite good, and it’s got an attractive array of properties (low-GI sugars, standardized caloric intake, ~$3 per bottle). It’s not a bad idea, but i wouldn’t want to make it part of a regular rotation. Keep a few dozen around, but i wouldn’t lean on it. I’m not clear on how well the powdered form keeps.
Dehydrating / Freeze Drying?
The vegetable problem would seem to have an easy answer - remove the water. Unfortunately, dehydrators and freeze dryers are too large for an apartment. The closest you can get is with an air fryer set to drying mode. But dehydration takes a long time, around eight hours for a small batch. Once a night you get a handful of dried banans or tomatoes; not much to go on.
It’s worth experimenting, since the product doesn’t require sealed jars the way that pickling does, but not entirely expected to be very useful.
