Understanding and Managing a Food Emergency

It is important to understand proper emergency food storage, from types of food and ways to store the different food types, to keep the stored food from going to waste.

Some Reasons for Food Storage

Probably the most common reason for food storage, long term or short, is to prepare for those “rainy” days. Natural disasters, from either weather or geological events, economic disaster, or political/terrorist activity. Any of these can and do set off panic buying at the outset of the event. Panic-buying happens when people suddenly rush out and buy food commodities in quantity because of limited supply or because of shrinking supply or due to an expected price increase over the next few days. Of course all this does is make fewer supplies available but with still larger demands.

Here in the mid-West, this is most evident, if even on a small scale, anytime a winter storm is approaching with significant accumulation of snow or ice expected. Going into a “My”Mart or any grocery store the day or evening before to buy essentials, only makes me a part of the large crowd stocking up on a few days worth of supplies. . .small scale panic buying.

And of course, the large events like major destructive storms that are not so predictable, do not allow this fore-warned buying, so the larger scale panic buying happens after the event.

The very issue of preparing to survive a food emergency, creates amother issue and that is the management and storage of long term food storage. People are concerned that the stored food will become stale or start to show signs of deterioration. This is because not all types of food last long enough, even when stored frozen.

To survive a food emergency, it is a matter of importance for your survival to understand the “how to” in times of natural disasters like an earthquake or storm, a full national pandemic like a terrorist attack, or an economic-emergency--say a stock market crash. It is equally important to know that options for storage like canning and freeze dried food can solve the issues of management and storage. Understanding and preparing for the need as well as the means, the storage means, are both important survival skills that anyone can and should aquire to survive a food emergency for a few days or weeks.

Next I want to discuss some types of foods for storage and also some proper ways to store the food for safety.

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