Are those government-owned warehouses of grain like the ones Kaj mentioned in Finland? The US used to have a strategic grain reserve, although it looks like at the time it was liquidated in 2008 it had only 915,000 tons of grain, which would feed the country for… not even a week.
Requiring businesses that sell non-perishable food to store a few months’ supply sounds reasonable, but I’m curious if other places have used that approach successfully. I know groceries are a low-margin business to begin with.
West-Berlin had a wall around it for decades and there was a political need to not be dependent on food transport that relied on permission from the Soviets. As a result we likely had larger stockpiles of food than any other city in modern history.
Groceries are a low-margin business but if you require all the supermarkets to follow a regulation they can just pass on the costs to customers.
It’s also worth noting that we pay huge sums of money in agricultural subsidies, sometimes inducing people not to produce food. We likely want to restructure those subsidies in a way that leads to larger stockpiles of food.
In Berlin where I live we used to have big warehouses full of grain for the case that we lose our access to outside markets.
It’s not that complicated to pass laws that force the big grocery chains to have their own warehouses with months worth of essentials.
Are those government-owned warehouses of grain like the ones Kaj mentioned in Finland? The US used to have a strategic grain reserve, although it looks like at the time it was liquidated in 2008 it had only 915,000 tons of grain, which would feed the country for… not even a week.
Requiring businesses that sell non-perishable food to store a few months’ supply sounds reasonable, but I’m curious if other places have used that approach successfully. I know groceries are a low-margin business to begin with.
West-Berlin had a wall around it for decades and there was a political need to not be dependent on food transport that relied on permission from the Soviets. As a result we likely had larger stockpiles of food than any other city in modern history.
Groceries are a low-margin business but if you require all the supermarkets to follow a regulation they can just pass on the costs to customers.
It’s also worth noting that we pay huge sums of money in agricultural subsidies, sometimes inducing people not to produce food. We likely want to restructure those subsidies in a way that leads to larger stockpiles of food.