World Food Reserves Under 70 Days

[Mr. Harley]

After some comments in the Tsunami thread - part 2, I decided to do a little research. The discussion had gotten into natural disasters of the catastrophic worldwide type, including Nuclear War and major volcanic events (large asteroid strikes also would fall into this).

We started discussing the Nuclear Autumn hypothesis, with the resulting loss in one or two crop harvests world-wide. One person stated that it wouldn't kill too many people (the starvation aspect), so I wondered. I found a couple of sites.

What it boils down to is that most of the world population would starve. I couldn't find figures for the actual grain reserves in the US and the EU, to try and figure how well they would hold up. Note that distributing food also takes fuel, so that in the event of a catastrophe even having enough food does not mean people do not starve. However, the converse is not true - If you have enough fuel for food distribution, but not enough food, starvation will ensue.

Any poster with info on the US and EU grain reserves (circa 2004/5) please post. Note that the minimum recommended intake of grain is 450 grams per person (from a site studying starvation in North Korea).

http://216.198.243.200/passage11/Strategy/Population.htm

Experts say that recent good weather in almost all the main growing regions, in contrast to Britain where August rain has devastated crops, has boosted the bumper harvest even further. But even optimistic estimates do not expect any recovery of stocks - now at their lowest level ever, well below the 70 days' supply needed for world food security.

Another couple of interesting sites.
www.survivalplus.com/foods/page0004.html
forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=35175


A site saying there has been recovery, but not by how much.
www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004/51844

Plus some hard science analysis about energy and food production, from several years ago. Definite bias in the first site as to conclusions, it assumes oil only, note that neither the nuclear option nor renewable energy is not discussed (I suspect that opposition to nukes will decrease once fuel prices are high enough).
dieoff.org/page65.htm
www.fb.org/news/fbn/00/07_31/html/high.html

Related info on worldwide food production. 41 page PDF.
ers.usda.gov/publications/waob041/waob20041f.pdf

[JimmyCracksCorn]

canned goods

[korn469]

as long as you have guns and bullets things aren't all bad

[The Mad Monk]

I have about a year's supply of food, it for no other reason than that I buy in bulk and then misplace stuff.

It's a bit of a pain, especially since I'm moving in two months,

[The Mad Monk]

Any poster with info on the US and EU grain reserves (circa 2004/5) please post. Note that the minimum recommended intake of grain is 450 grams per person (from a site studying starvation in North Korea).

Is that dry weight? A pound of dry brown rice would be alot for one day for me.

[Chemical Ollie]

During the Cold War, Sweden stored several years supply of food, gasoline and diesel in large underground facilities. Not only for the army, but enough for civilian use. I don't know if we still do, but I think we have scrapped (=used) most of it now.

[Dinner]

Just make sure you have a good gun and a few friends and you'll always know you'll be the one with the food if anyone has any.

On the upside the EU and US tend to have great big storehouses full of surplus grain. One of the reasons they give away food aid so freely is because it is a good way to get rid of some of that excess grain.

[molly bloom]

Start cultivating mushrooms.


And bonsai fruit trees.

[Mr. Harley]

As a hunter and reloader (ex-Federal Firearms License, they increased the fees too much for serious hobbyists) the gun to have is a black powder rifle, or some of the old large cartridge winchesters, like the .41 winchester that started off as a blackpowder cartridge (I could have the wrong one, I'm doing this from memory). Scrap lead will be available for extended periods of time, and you can always convert to a flint or even matchlock. That, or a crossbow - regular bows are nice but take substantially more training.

The good thing is that in the continental US we will have abundent deer, and if you have a general civil breakdown, abundant dogs. Plus pidgeons, morning doves, and Canada geese. The biggest problem will be that people will need to relearn a series of life skills that are dwindling, so the losses would not be small. Definitely get a the old Foxfire series if you think something like that could happen. I recieved a set from my grandmother several years ago, and they are very interesting.

However, I'm still interested in the stockpiles of grain in various food producing countries, including Australia and Canada. If the timing is wrong, and with the general drift towards just-in-time delivery of goods, exactly how much food would the US have stockpiled let's say in July, before most of the grain harvest? Larger net food importing countries would suffer horrendous losses, including much of Africa and Asia. I'm not too sure on Central and South America.

[Dinner]

Sucks to be them but I should be fine.

[Chemical Ollie]

Forget about hunting in case of a volcano winter. The wildlife will starve too.

[Pekka]

Individuals shouldn't waste their time on thinking how they can stock enough food. They should, instead, think about how they are going to protect that food, and how to steal food. How to gather food in disaster environment and what the possible hazards are, depending on the crisis. Fall out, what does that do to things, what can you eat.

Dont' eat squarrels in norhtern europe for example. You'll get nasty disease and you can die from it.

Things like that. Basically it all comes down to protecting what you have. Strongest will survive. THe ones with the shotgns will survive. They have to be able to shoot people who are coming there to get food. Can you shoot a person for coming to you take your food? You have to. IN fact, you better get ready to that idea right now.

[BeBMan]

Most westerners are too fat anyway.

[JohnT]

I don't want to belabor the obvious, but food reserves cannot be too high or else the stuff would spoil.

What is the amount of food reserves that you have in your house? 3 days? A week?

Panicked yet?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by JohnT
I don't want to belabor the obvious, but food reserves cannot be too high or else the stuff would spoil.

What is the amount of food reserves that you have in your house? 3 days? A week?

Panicked yet?

Having just gone through our pantry I would estimate that we have enough food to eat reasonably comfortably for about 2 months-- perhaps a couple of weeks less if we lost refrigeration.

We buy some stuff in bulk-- like apple juice (I think I counted over 20 of the 1L containers) and freeze some stuff (8 or 9 loaves of home-made bread) and tend to stock backups of things like our peanut butter-- Add in some stuff sent by my parents ( a dozen jars of pickled beets) and 2 months is not crazy on the food front.

. . . and I don't think ANYONE in Canada stocks only 3 days food-- Anyone that has would probably have gotten a bit hungry during something as routine as a major blizzard