A staple of our stores for long and short term foods. I find it interesting that the cheap and easy things like rice and beans, are the things that are harder to get or replinish on a major economic downturn. I live close to the rice capital of the world and I see how it is grown. But it's not something I could easily do myself on a small for my family scale.  Pinto beans are the same way.

It got me to thinking about some of the cheap staples that we use now that would be difficult to replinish.  Salt, oil, or even a gallon of milk. Sure, go and buy a few months worth and rotate thru them and that's great for short lived events like storms, a job loss or the TP shortage of 2020. But these short term stores (not how long the item stored lasts but rather how long I survive off of the store) don't seem to offer much protection from a major economic downturn, a great depression, or venezuela style hyper inflation.

Rather than argue the likelihood of any of these I'd like to pick your brain:
What do you do now to prepare for these long term events?
How would you prep now to be able to replinish these (now) low cost staples?
How do you balance the cost (time, space, and $) of storing more of this vs other ways of supplying that need?

A crude example of this would be how much powdered milk do you store and rotate vs buying a cow?
How many closets full of dehydrated vegetables do you stack up vs using that money buying a small plot of land and learning to crow a crop?


Again I am not wanting to debate your ideas vs mine on what events we should prepare for. I am looking to get an insight into like minded people and how you approach or dismiss this situation

I have rice and beans. every time I go to the grocer I purchase more.
I just wish I could find ham hocks that lasted as long

Eh, it’s survival food, not living food.

We store a supply of the things our family already uses on an everyday basis.  Rice, assorted types of beans, oatmeal, a number of types of wheat berries, sugar & molasses, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, yeast, olive oil in metal cans, coffee beans, home canned meats & veggies, etc...  We store a few luxuries also, again, things we use now.  For instance, Sunday evening meal is a snack so my wife does not have to cook anything fancy.  Popcorn with ranch powder or cheddar cheese powder, home canned grape juice, mint tea (in season), one of us may make soup or grilled cheese sandwiches or something simple.  Perhaps we will open a few quarts of homemade venison BBQ and make sandwiches on homemade wheat or sourdough bread.  We do not store a lot of powdered milk, if we are making cheese or butter and need unpasteurized milk we purchase or trade with a local farmer for it.  I would expect to do the same if it was not available at a store, and the dairy farmers at that point will need rid of it anyways if it is not being picked up or if they loose power to run their milk tank coolers.

We do not have a lot of freeze dried foods.  They are expensive in a calories per dollar, and we are a large family of 10 (with 4 teenage boys) to feed, plus additional family members that we have food stored for.  We live in an older large farmhouse, and we have the room to store a few extra buckets of food for them, as well as a root cellar in the basement.  We have a fair sized garden and we preserve by canning a variety of veggies, fruits, and meats.  We usually can between 500 and 1000 quarts per year depending on how the garden and hunting seasons produce, as well as how much is left over from the previous year.  We also vacuum seal and freeze some items.

None of this is actually cost effective for us.  I own a rural general / discount grocery store.  I can purchase veggies and fruit more cost effectively than I can raise my own.  I can purchase meat when it is on sale (yes, the stores buy what their suppliers put on sale at times) already packaged without the trouble of raising it, butchering it, and packaging it.  I have all the food I need at my store.  

Getting my food at the store is convenient.  It is also a good place to teach my children how to work and get along with others.  What it does not do is teach my children how to raise and work a garden.  It does not teach then how to raise livestock, hunt, butcher and preserve.  It pays the bills but does not teach self sufficiency.  Our family believes all of these things are important in the teaching of children.  

However, The store can burn down.  The store can be looted.  The contents can be confiscated by the government.  Re supply may not happen consistently (we are seeing this now).  It would be foolish to depend on a single source of food, just as it would be foolish not to have my children learn the skills that will help them to survive if times get worse.

The internet is full of videos on how to store the basic food supplies a person or persons need to survive.  Food costs as a percentage of earned income even with the current increases are still at historical lows.  Watch a few videos, read up on the recommended food storage amounts from the Mormon church.  Purchase some basics food supplies and package them.  You will save a some money by doing this yourself instead of purchasing already packaged food, and a lot of money over purchasing prepackaged freeze dried foods.  

One final thing. History has shown that during times of inflation food costs will increase.  During times of hyperinflation, food may not be available, or the money you have may not be accepted for it's purchase.  Properly stored food will hold it's value, and help you survive that situation if it should come.  Excess food could also be sold or bartered if necessary.  If the situation never happens, you can eat your stored food and loose nothing other than the little money you spent on packaging supplies, and the time you spent storing it.

I was not raised in the country, I was raised in a city.  In my younger years our family did not have a garden, and meat came from the store.  My wife and I chose to move to a rural location.  We choose to live a simple lifestyle, and enjoy working together as a family and preserving the food we grow.  We had no experience with any of this, and the internet was not yet common when we started living this way.  With all the free available information these days, it is easier than ever to learn how and what food to store.

Sorry this got so long winded.

Your question actually goes to the most basic question most people have to answer and it is different for everyone.

Personally, I dismiss nothing, but I prepare for most likely first. In my case, weather events are most likely and generally those are less than 1 month.
Those are also the easiest events to be prepared for. It's easy to calculate how many people X 30 days = how much we should store.
 
You seem to be focusing on longer term events, economic collapse, hyper-inflation, depression, etc.
EOTWAWKI events - honestly, there is not a whole lot that you can do about them.
The possibility exists that everything you have stored will run out during an extended event.

At the height of our storage, we had enough calories stored to last 2yrs, if it was just me and the wife unit.

However, we found that eating and rotating through that was virtually impossible. Even before we got to the first batch of beans we had stored packed in Mylar, they were hard and required a pressure cooker to cook.
- lesson learned was that although beans may boast a 20yr shelf-life and still be edible, after just a few years packed in Mylar w/O2 absorbers, they are no longer pleasant to cook and eat.
- rice, OTOH is stores great and seems unaffected by time.
-salt and sugar, store indefinitely and its fairly easy and cheap to store several years worth.

Growing crops is not easy. We plant a garden almost year round, but suffer loss due to weather, insects, rodents, and disease virtually every year.
I laugh when I see people that think that when the time comes, they will start growing food because they have a "seed bank".
Your location (hardiness zone) also limits what you can grow.

The downside is you find out that caring for a garden limits your ability to take off for extended trips.
Animals bring the same problems. They require also care, so you just can't leave them and go on vacation and you are also faced with the possibility of not being able to feed them.

However, the ability to grow some food, and make simple things from scratch such as bread go a long way to helping during an EOTWAWKI event.

That being said, and i hate to open this can of worms, those EOTWAWLI events probably lend themselves more to gold and silver storage, than long term food storage.

The wife and I prepare for short term events only.  We have enough for a few months.  But I believe that if things lasted longer than that, then we will need to relocate to a part of the country that is not in peril.  If the entire country is bad, then we will just plan on dying.  

Really the only way to plan for a multi-year disaster would be to have a farm you are already living on that must be off the grid (ergo. no need for gasoline or outside electricity), and that's a hard, hard way to live.  You would also need to have family headed in or nearby you trust that can help work on and defend your farm from looters.  Anything less, in my opinion, leaves big holes of one kind or another in your plans.  As others above have noted, you can't be a city guy with a seed bank and expect things to work out well.  People don't really understand how many things can go wrong with a garden until they have done it a few years and are over the initial learning hump.

And anyway, we both require meds that will no longer be available post disaster.  So we will both be dead in a few months regardless.

those are staples only because of the other things we have set up currently (economy, cheap transportation, shipping, etc). I think a true long term SHTF is unlikely worldwide, there's just too much moving anymore. But if we look back 100 years you will get an idea of the mid term effects. Basically you eat what you can grow in your area. If you're in PA you're not gonna have a banana. You're getting potatoes and wheat, corn in the summer, that kind of thing.

a lot like they do in small European towns now and hipster restaurants. You eat local, what's in season. Don't matter if you want tomato sauce on your pasta if it's pumpkin season, your ass gets pumpkin

Rice and beans are cheap to store NOW because of how we're set up. But if it gets bad, that's just to hold you through to the replacement system.

No if you're smart.


For some it's cheap filler to extend the food reserves they have, because being fed isn't the same as being "Not Hungry". In planning my emergency Reserves, I figured that I would go a little nicer on the quality of food that I put away because eating would likely be the highlight of my day if I were living off of a survival lardor. Having a large helping of beans and rice on the side means being able to work all day long without losing weight-that firewood isn't going to chop itself.

Why are you limiting yourself to short-term stores?

None of those items are particularly expensive, or difficult to store in a manner that gives them decent shelf life.

There is no practical reason why you couldn't buy enough of them right now to last through just about any conceivable disaster.

I'm not limiting myself. Have dehydrated veggies, canned good, buckets of rice and beans, 3 gardens, a couple of dozen chickens etc.

I'm just considering how much and at what cost. Tried to make the point that what is cheap and easy to store now won't be easily replaced during a disaster. Yes I see that's good in 1 way. Being if its not easy to replace then it will be valuable. But then there is the trade off of putting an increasing amount of time, money and space into storing things like rice and beans. Where do you draw the line? Do you dedicate a bedroom, shop office, or some other whole area to long term stores? But then we all hope to not need our "insurance" because i don't know about you guys but I much prefer hot food, cold air conditioner etc. If I'm digging into my rice and bean buckets then disaster must be at hand.

So should I put more effort into storing rice and beans, or do I put that money and effort into removing myself from the tit of easily broken supply chains? And at what cost? Tyson can give me boneless skinless protein easier than I can right now. Same as Riceland can give me 100lbs of white rice a whole lot easier than I can myself. However then I'm reliant on them.

And if I say well its cheap now, may be hard to replace later why not take my 20x10 unused shop office and stack it deep with 55 gallon drums of rice and beans in mylar? At what point do you draw the line and say "i'm prepared" for long term events? With short term stuff its so much easier. I have 20 gallons of gas, and an inverter generator to run my fridges and freezer for weeks. Plus the 2 SUV's that are likely at least half full at this point would supply for an even longer outage. But that say I feel that prepared for a long term event, I don't know how.

What are you planning for?  Are you certain you can keep your job and the pay will increase consistent with inflation?  Are you more concerned about the increasing cost of goods and services due to inflation and shortages?  Or do you believe there will be an world changing event?

Look at the cost benefit ratio of your options.  As you state, rice and beans are inexpensive now, and store well.  Why not stock up on some even though they may not be easy to resupply later.  Doing this will give you a supply of food, or barter material if needed.  At the same time learning how to grow, harvest, preserve, and grow next years crop from this years seeds is also valuable.  Storing purchased food product takes some money and time.  Growing your own takes less money but more time.  Basis your choices on what you believe is most likely for your situation.  If you live rural, plan on the garden and store what you need.  If you live in a city, gardening may not work well for you, store more food.  If you have spare time learn skills.  If you have no spare time but excess money, stock up on supplies.

You have a rds on your rifle right? Even though someday the optic may fail or battery will die and your dont have anymore.

It will help you get through the peak/critical/hardest time to survive.

If you can afford a 55gal drum of rice and beans then do it. Use it while you're learning to live with out it.

@wshbrngr

Tell me more about your beans getting hard to use.

Ive never really thought about that. I store some and we'll make soup with them but Ive never thought about how to prepare them after years in storage.

I typically just soak over night then simmer for a couple days with the other stuff I add. Will 2-3 year beans not prepare like that?

Beans do get old and hard over time. They take forever to cook after awhile.

The solution that I've found is to vacuum pack them and they'll keep much better for a long time.

Cook the beans, freeze dry, and vacuum seal -- at least that is what  would be doing if I had a $2K freeze dryer.

Latter Day Saints Cannery is what you seek.