Sandy Peifer keeps a six-month supply of food in her home in Ashley, Ohio. It's in closets, cupboards and wherever else she can find space. That's her way of protecting her family against natural or personal disaster.
When Peifer's husband Bryan was laid off two years ago, the couple relied on relatives and others to feed their family. They realized that they needed to be ready to care for themselves and their two children if crisis ever struck again.
Peifer stresses that they're not survivalists stocking a bomb shelter. "It's not like we're doing it like the world is going to end," she said. "It's a safeguard -- a safety net for me and my family."
Given the state of national food policy, the Peifers' practices may just make sense. U.S. farm policy encourages farmers to grow only five crops: corn, soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton. Much of that ends up in animal feed or as high-fructose corn syrup for the food-processing industry, rather than in human food, according to Ben Lilliston of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. That doesn't favor the diversity needed to keep shelves stocked with a national supply of food.
While we produce plenty of chicken and milk, we import most of our produce. So if our food supply were cut off -- a warning not unfamiliar to those who want to buy unlimited bags of rice these days at Sam's Club -- there could be consequences.
Sharon Astyk, an upstate New York farmer and a devotee of the "eat locally" movement, doesn't consider that idea farfetched at all. Most supermarkets only have enough food to last a few days, and anything from Katrina-like disasters to global events, such as a blockage of major trade routes, could lead to national food shortages, she said. Skyrocketing oil prices are also a danger.
"There are reasons to be concerned about a national energy crisis, and about actual shortages of some foodstuffs in the face of climate change and energy depletion," Astyk, author of the forthcoming book Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front, said via e-mail.
Families are likelier to stockpile food after an emergency, according to David Reeder, president of Captain Dave's Survival Center, a disaster-preparation business in Raleigh, N.C.
Saving for a Rainless Day
"Buying food in preparation for an emergency or a disaster is really no different than saving money for retirement," he said in an e-mail. "Buying food now, when it is plentiful, and storing it for use when it is not plentiful, is good planning."
The instinct to save in times of plenty for times of need has been undermined by our national system of just-in-time food production and distribution, he argued. And stored food -- with its staples of dried beans, rice and wheat -- can also be healthier than what people normally eat.
"I daresay that a diet based on storage-food would be more healthy than the diet of most Americans, as it would include plenty of fiber, no fast food, little red meat, and little or no junk food," he said.
Lilliston suggested that the government's approach might need to change, since more people want to buy locally, to eat organic foods and to understand the food markets better.
"The market is changing on its own, and now the government policy needs to change to reflect that," he said.
Storing food for lean times has been a way of life for Ohio State University accountant Lisa Murphy since she was a child, living with grandparents who had survived the Great Depression. Now, Murphy sees food storage simply as "getting back to country basics," as well as a way to promote a healthy lifestyle.
When her husband, Pat, lost his job a few years ago, they ate "fantastically well" from their food stores.
Moreover, she thinks that they could live for about nine months on the nuts, rice, beans and flour they keep, plus the tomatoes, peppers and squash that she's picked and preserved.
"It's exciting knowing that, in case something happens, I'm prepared," said Murphy. "It's fun for me. It makes sense."Jewish Exponent
