The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon January 6th, 2009

On this subject I’ve got some prior writings, so we’ll start with those:

 1. Getting a two week basic supply up: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/04/food-storage-101-part-i/

2. Why two weeks really is not sufficient: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/07/08/food-storage-102-2-weeks-is-not-enough/

3. Very super cheap beginner food storage with help from a mouse friend: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/10/17/friday-food-storage-not-quite-so-quickie-5-week-beginner-food-storage/

But rather than tell you how much food to store (although I’m still going to suggest a 3 month minimum if you can manage it), I thought I’d talk rather about different strategies as embodied in different quantities and approaches, what they can do, and what the downsides are – because everything has costs and benefits.

So here are some possible approaches and quantities:

1. The “I want some Extra Food, But I Don’t Want To Pick a Time Frame or Feel Like I Have to Buy One Particular Thing” approach.  This way of going at it says “I’m just going to buy an extra of all the storage-ready things, or can as much of my garden as I can, but I’m not going to set formal goals for myself or try and calculate how much I have.

Pluses of this strategy: No pressure, minimal planning, you are sure to get food you’ll eat since you are buying what you eat anyway.

Downsides of this strategy: If you normally eat things that aren’t storable, you are probably getting a somewhat unbalanced menu, you don’t get the economic benefits of narrowing down what you want and buying in bulk, and you don’t really know how long it would last you.

Who this might work best for: People without time and energy to approach this another way, people intimidated by thinking in terms of big sacks of grain, small families of adults, people who aren’t very worried about the future.

2. The “I want the Two Weeks that FEMA/The Red Cross say I need” folks.  This way says “At least at first, my priority is to get two weeks of food so that we can endure a short term crisis caused by a hurricane, ice storm, etc…”

Pluses of this strategy: You know you have a supply, it isn’t very costly to build up this much, most disasters so far really do involve rescue in two weeks, it doesn’t take a lot of space to store this much food, you are probably mobile with it - you don’t have an investment in anything you can’t stick mostly in the trunk of your car.

Downsides of this strategy: More costly, since bulk purchasing probably won’t be an option unless you have a large household, Quite a few disasters, including a couple in just the last few years have involved longer periods than two weeks, so it might not be adequate, Doesn’t provide much of a cushion for an economic crisis (ie, job loss), for such a short time you might not feel motivated to rotate/eat what you store, store what you eat, and thus a shift to “emergency food” may be more disruptive than you expect. 

3.  The “Three Month Supply Strategy.”  This is my personal minimum recommendation, particularly if you are really integrating it into your daily diet (ie, rotating, eating and maintaining) because it allows you simply stop shopping for a while, if, say, you have an economic crisis and can’t afford to, or a major illness and don’t have the time.  It also fits with existing government guidelines for quarantine measures in the case of an epidemic – that is, the US and Australian governments, among others, are assuming that you might have to be housebound for 3 months at a time, but they don’t have any good plan for how you might actually eat during that period.  So perhaps you should .

Pluses of this strategy: Three months is much less overwhelming and intimidating than a year’s supply, storage is probably manageable for people in all but the very tiniest homes and apartments, cost is fairly manageable for many people – even on food stamps it should be possible over time.  This quantity really is the first at which economies of scale can be used, getting lower prices for cases and bulk quantities.  If you integrate this into your daily eating, this also means no major dietary shift if you have to rely on this.  For those in moderate climates, three may be sufficient to cover one mild winter season or summer dry season.  Shopping frequency declines because you don’t run out as often.

Downside of this strategy: If you have to leave or evacuate your home, you risk a major economic loss, accumulating three months of food, even very gradually can be too expensive for low income households, requires you to make space to store and manage food, requires you to rethink menus and adapt your eating to eat what you store, etc…, takes time to manage, particularly if you plan to home preserve some or all of it.  Shopping frequency only can decline if you have some kind of powered vehicle or help getting everything home – this can be tough on people living in dense cities who don’t like carrying 50lb sacks of lentils on their bikes or on the bus.

 4. Six months supply: This is a nice, solid amount of food.  It does require some real space to maintain and store it, but it gives you a lot of options, including eating your stores down during mildly inconvenient times, just to save money.  If you keep this much, you’ll almost certainly be living the “food storage lifestyle” , that is, your diet will involve a lot of these ingredients.

Pluses of this strategy: You have a lot of food, and can weather  a lot of long term crises, particularly economic ones very well.  You should have to shop only rarely – once a month or less for non-perishables.  By the time you have this much, you should probably be able to produce a fairly varied diet from food storage.  This is the traditional quantity for those in cold or very dry climates with a long season in which nothing grows – you’ll be able to get from one growing season to the next.  Since food prices have been even more volatile than energy prices in some ways, the odds are good that you’ll be saving money in the longer term, prepares you for major societal upheaval if you worry about that sort of thing.

Downside of the strategy: Costs a fair bit to accumulate, may well be out of the range of many people. You then have a large investment in food and could lose it in a flood or fire.  Requires a considerable amount of space and maintenence.  If TEOTWAWKI never actually happens and you don’t eat your food down, you may feel rather silly.  When people ask you how much food you have stored, you’ll probably be embarassed .

5. “Everything but the kitchen sink… 1 year or more.”  This is the strategy of prudent nut-jobs all over .

Pluses of this strategy: You have a giant, wonkin’ quantity of food.  The zombies can come – you are all set.

Downside of the strategy: You have a giant, wonkin’ quantity of food.  You may get bored waiting for zombies .

 More seriously this level of food storage means that you almost never have to shop (the grocery store is your pantry) – you can reduce trips out for anything other than perishables (and may not that depending on what you’ve got growing or preserving) to once a quarter.  Assuming you can come up with the money to keep your home, you could stay tight even through a bad growing season and an extended job loss.  In a shorter term situation, it allows you to feed more than yourself, allowing for extra guests, and generosity without fear of deprivation.

The downside is that it takes time, money and energy to manage and accumulate.  It is a fairly tough thing to transport, so if you have a fire or a flood, you’ll lose your investment.  It is probably best suited to people who are unlikely to evacuate.  It takes space to store, which is fine if you’ve got it, but since you pay for floor space, might push up your housing costs.  And if you don’t pay attention to it, you will lose some of your investment.  Is cheapest if you do some of the putting up yourself, which takes time and some equipment.

So what’s your plan, if any?

 Sharon

• Food Storage
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