Disproportionate storage

[grenfell]

I made a comment in the "how long will your preps last " thread and want to expand on that but rather than go off in that thread thought I'd start another. In the original thread I said that we are perhaps asking the wrong question because frankly I don't feel we're going to face a situation where the shop shelves are suddenly bare of everything. Or if they do there's a bigger problem and society or civilisation has irreparably collapsed overnight. A far more likely situation is for foodstuffs to disappear off the shelves or become effectively unaffordable over a period of time. It might be over a few months or even years but not overnight. First to go would be stuff towards the luxury end of the scale , staples will be available for much longer. A simple look at history shows that. To this end perhaps we should be looking at , for want of a better term , disproportionate storage. For example , take pasta . A simple staple that we all store , easy to store and will keep you alive but on it's own pretty tasteless or bland. To this end a lot of us store pasta sauce but that source would , I feel , be more likely to vanish long before the pasta itself. Ok so one could flavour the pasta with foraged herbs or whatever but the idea of storing more of what will/might disappear first is sound.
I'm not suggesting we dump storing basics just to store disproportionately , a hundred portions of pasta but perhaps two hundred jars of sauce. Does that make sense...
And of course it's not just pasta that was an example. One could store booze and tobacco even if a teetotaller non smoker simply for the potential trade value...

[Frnc]

How do you know luxury items will go before staples?

Personally I just store what I think I need for general bug in scenarios. I don't have a very big store. I have pasta, tuna, tom puree, tinned toms, tinned butter beans, pasta sauce, cheese powder, Nido, and I intend to get some egg powder. Also of course, herbs, cornflower, stock cubes etc.

[grenfell]

How do you know luxury items will go before staples?

Personally I just store what I think I need for general bug in scenarios.

History basically. Looking back to say the second world war we see bread and potatoes weren't rationed ( although bread rationing did come in just after the war) . Meat and fats , while not quite luxury items were put on ration early on. Look to what was being traded on the black market , it wasn't bread and potatoes so storing more of what would be traded there could be benificial.
If anyone can find an historical example of a situation where bread , potatoes and pasta have disappeared but bacon and butter have still been plentiful I'd be glad to hear of it.
Storing for a general bug in seems sensible as is storing for a slow decline. Storing expecting for food to disappear overnight from the shops is getting into prepper fantasy territory...

[jennyjj01]

...I said that we are perhaps asking the wrong question because frankly I don't feel we're going to face a situation where the shop shelves are suddenly bare of everything. Or if they do there's a bigger problem and society or civilisation has irreparably collapsed overnight. A far more likely situation is for foodstuffs to disappear off the shelves or become effectively unaffordable over a period of time. It might be over a few months or even years but not overnight. First to go would be stuff towards the luxury end of the scale , staples will be available for much longer. ...

A great and thought provoking post. So... Store more luxury foods and adjuncts and less staple rice and carbs on the expectation that a sack of rice will always be available. You may have a point. More Dolmio, less pasta. More Oxo, less dried spuds. More curry powder, less rice.
That certainly sounds good if space is limited and some trading opportunities are envisaged.
The carbs and staples and even water can take most of our space, but who can recall a time when a sack of rice and plentiful water were not available?
Maybe we need to examine precedents like the 70s bread and flour shortages and maybe look at what really happens in war zones and poor zones like North Korea.
We could also look at what FoodBanks ASK for most.

A typical foodbank 'shopping list' is below. I know one which is always crying out for UHTMilk, cereals and tinned ready meals , which are needed by families which may be ill-equipped to cook. They never ask for flour or dry pulses or TVP.

Personally, I'm overweighted on cooking sauces and tinned tomatoes and very underweighted on pulses and flour. I'm way understocked on tinned meat and fish. Storing Cooking oil and wine kits saved a fortune.

To be reviewed.

Foodbank Shopping List : Note how they don't ask for dried pulses, flour or herbs or spices.
Convenience is paramount.

Potatoes - tinned, Biscuits ,Crackers / crisps, Instant flavoured noodles, Instant pasta meals,
Custard - tinned, packet, carton, Pasta / Spaghetti, Soup - tinned and packets,
Sponge pudding - tinned, Rice pudding - tinned,Vegetables - tinned, Baked beans / tinned spaghetti,
Jars of curry / pasta sauce, Fruit juice (long life) / squash, Tomatoes - tinned, Jam / marmalade,
Tea bags / coffee, Instant gravy, Corned beef, Tinned pork, Tinned meat meals (chilli, stew etc.),
Fish - tinned, Fruit - tinned, Milk - UHT, Sugar, Cereals, Rice, Microwave rice

[Frnc]

Makes sense. We grow most of our wheat, and most years we export more spuds than we import by a fair amount. Not sure how much prices of those here are affected by global prices. If wheat was hit in other countries, our wheat growers might sell it abroad for higher prices, unless the govt banned that. India did that recently with one staple, I forget what. Of course some people manage to grow their own spuds.

[jennyjj01]

Makes sense. We grow most of our wheat, and most years we export more spuds than we import by a fair amount. Not sure how much prices of those here are affected by global prices. If wheat was hit in other countries, our wheat growers might sell it abroad for higher prices, unless the govt banned that. India did that recently with one staple, I forget what. Of course some people manage to grow their own spuds.

India banned export of non-Basmati rice, to control the price.
Speaking of spuds, The Irish potato famine of 1846, artificially created shortage of the absolute staple food. We might see swathes of Ukraine and Africa starved of Wheat by Russian intervention and environmental terrorism, or maybe a shortage of meat in Europe where politicians are meddling in the market for fertilizer. Or maybe we could re-examine the food economies of Sri Lanka, where politics disrupted supply.
So. Staple foods CAN become unavailable. But equally, look what's happened to the price of fresh veg, imported from Europe. Too expensive to be worth growing in light of fertilizer and energy costs.

For now, I THINK, I'll keep my storage roughly proportionate, but I'm open to persuasion.

[grenfell]

A great and thought provoking post. So... Store more luxury foods and adjuncts and less staple rice and carbs on the expectation that a sack of rice will always be available. You may have a point. More Dolmio, less pasta. More Oxo, less dried spuds. More curry powder, less rice.

Sort of . I'm not really suggesting one dumps half the staples and replace them with something that makes what are in reality blandish staples more appertising just more to bear in mind that those less than absolutely vital items would seem more likely to become harder or more expensive in certain situations. Perhaps luxury was the wrong word , pasta sauce , worcestershire sauce ( or Hendersons for those who know the debatez) or marmite are hardly in the same vein as caviar and champagne.
I suppose it comes down to how one sees prepping and what one prepares for. I don't get too het up on the whole overnight collapse senerios as that's something along the lines of a nuclear strike or asteroid impact and would be so cataclysmic that whether one has three or six months worth of rice and pasta would largely become a moot point. That isn't to say I don't see the collapse of society , and certainly western society , as anything but inevitable just that it will take time.
I see prepping more as a way to smooth over the bumps , in effect glorified can kicking , making the slow crash more livable and hopefully giving me more time to adapt to whatever comes next.

[jennyjj01]

A great and thought provoking post. So... Store more luxury foods and adjuncts and less staple rice and carbs on the expectation that a sack of rice will always be available. You may have a point. More Dolmio, less pasta. More Oxo, less dried spuds. More curry powder, less rice.

Sort of . I'm not really suggesting one dumps half the staples and replace them with something that makes what are in reality blandish staples more appertising just more to bear in mind that those less than absolutely vital items would seem more likely to become harder or more expensive in certain situations. Perhaps luxury was the wrong word , pasta sauce , worcestershire sauce ( or Hendersons for those who know the debatez) or marmite are hardly in the same vein as caviar and champagne.
I suppose it comes down to how one sees prepping and what one prepares for. I don't get too het up on the whole overnight collapse senerios as that's something along the lines of a nuclear strike or asteroid impact and would be so cataclysmic that whether one has three or six months worth of rice and pasta would largely become a moot point. That isn't to say I don't see the collapse of society , and certainly western society , as anything but inevitable just that it will take time.
I see prepping more as a way to smooth over the bumps , in effect glorified can kicking , making the slow crash more livable and hopefully giving me more time to adapt to whatever comes next.

Exactly, and I knew what you meant by more luxury items, as in cooking sauces etc.
Prepping: Graceful Degradation! And maybe surviving the crises or 'depressions' that could 'destroy' the non-prepped. In case of teotwawki, we could only buy some time with our preps at best.

We're pretty much all a way down the 'graceful degradation route, thanks to inflation. Switching down from Heinz to own label, Tesco to lidl, through Home Bargains to farmfoods, and switching down from regular restaurant meals, to occasional chippy tea, on to cooking fishfingers at home and thence to yellow sticker fishfingers when we can get them.
god only knows where it will end, or whether the days of splendour will return. Looking at how many hospitality businesses have gone bust, I fear recovery is not on the horizon.

[grenfell]

The Heinz and the fishfingers are good examples of what I'm talking about. The brand names might not have yet actually disappeared from the shelves but the price seems to be making them disappear from your shopping basket. Ok so there's an argument that if you have the money to buy a year's worth of Heinz or Captain Birdseye in advance then you could probably afford it for long but it's also a bit of a hedge against inflation and puts off that bit longer before we have to start on the happy shopper alternatives. If it were just the happy shopper available even that would be preferable and could put off going without that bit longer.
Ultimately while I think we're a long way off soylent green territory or even numbers facing starvation ( at least in this country) I do feel that despite the optimism of politicians we will see at least a reduction in living standards with at a minimum higher prices and less choice.

[DustyDog]

Yes seems about right. Some foods could be priced out of the ability for people to afford, supply/demand springs to mind, as a rule I tend to store the staples with sauces etc to suit, I have to sneak extra stuff in the pantry when the two girls not looking.