So, uh, how should we start preparing for the impact of this here in the West? Stock up on food? But electronics we might need early on? Shift our investments away from companies who depend crucially on China in some way?
As an individual concerned about food shortages, you always have the option of tailoring how you buy groceries. A trick I learned from Reddit for stocking up on long-shelf-life foods: watch what food packaging leaves your house in the trash or recycling. Check the best-before date on the package each time you eat something that stores for a relatively long time, especially canned foods and dry goods. This way you can find the approximate rate at which you go through a given item—maybe you usually use 1 box of pasta and 1 can of soup each week for an easy casserole. Then for each item, you get a feel for how much longer you could’ve kept it before its best-by date: I’ve noticed that the pasta I buy often has a date 2-3 years in the future, and canned goods often claim 1-2 years. So if pasta is good for 2 years and I eat 1 box a week, that means I could keep 104 boxes of it if I had the space, and still use up all of it before its best-by. If I eat 1 can of a given soup per week, and it’s best by 1 year in the future, I could keep 52 cans if I had the space.
Now, most foods are safe and nutritious after their best-by or sell-by dates, sometimes long after. But the date is a good lazy rule of thumb for “the manufacturer is confident the packaging will protect it for this long” when you’re getting started. Once you figure out how much stuff you can keep around and still use it in time, figure out how much space you’re willing to commit to your personal food security insurance. To figure out which long-shelf-life items are best for you to store in your limited space, consider how they come together into meals (would this item be useless to you without a specific fresh ingredient?) and whether eating from the selection you choose to store would offer balanced nutrition.
Once you’ve calculated what you want to store based on these constraints, buy a little extra of your storage items each time you grocery shop, until you’ve reached your target quantities. Then all you have to do is remember to rotate through them: eat the oldest of each item first. If you learn that the enjoyment you get from a particular item declines when it reaches a certain age that’s younger than the manufacturer’s stated use-by, treat that as its new de facto use-by date going forward. If your dietary needs change, like if you discover a new allergy or decide you don’t like a given item any more, you can easily donate your extras to a local food pantry because everything you store will still be in date.
The trick to this process is to make it as easy as possible. If there’s a part of the food storage process that makes you look for an excuse to stop, change it so you don’t hate the process. Having food on hand is important preparedness for natural disasters as well as man-made ones, and being able to drop your grocery bills to 0 for a few weeks or months while still eating well is a wonderful trick to keep up your sleeve in the world of personal finance.
If there are new electronics that you want primarily because they’re new, like the latest phone, stocking up early won’t buy you much benefit. But if there are secondhand or older electronics that you’re certain you’ll want in the foreseeable future, increased competition for them in the future may suggest that prices will be better now than later.
So, uh, how should we start preparing for the impact of this here in the West?
Push officials to redirect corn subsidies for ethanol toward food? Keeping American corn production alive in case it suddenly was required was one of the reasons for said subsidies[1], after all.
(Of course, this doesn’t help the upstream portions of the food supply chain.)
So, uh, how should we start preparing for the impact of this here in the West? Stock up on food? But electronics we might need early on? Shift our investments away from companies who depend crucially on China in some way?
As an individual concerned about food shortages, you always have the option of tailoring how you buy groceries. A trick I learned from Reddit for stocking up on long-shelf-life foods: watch what food packaging leaves your house in the trash or recycling. Check the best-before date on the package each time you eat something that stores for a relatively long time, especially canned foods and dry goods. This way you can find the approximate rate at which you go through a given item—maybe you usually use 1 box of pasta and 1 can of soup each week for an easy casserole. Then for each item, you get a feel for how much longer you could’ve kept it before its best-by date: I’ve noticed that the pasta I buy often has a date 2-3 years in the future, and canned goods often claim 1-2 years. So if pasta is good for 2 years and I eat 1 box a week, that means I could keep 104 boxes of it if I had the space, and still use up all of it before its best-by. If I eat 1 can of a given soup per week, and it’s best by 1 year in the future, I could keep 52 cans if I had the space.
Now, most foods are safe and nutritious after their best-by or sell-by dates, sometimes long after. But the date is a good lazy rule of thumb for “the manufacturer is confident the packaging will protect it for this long” when you’re getting started. Once you figure out how much stuff you can keep around and still use it in time, figure out how much space you’re willing to commit to your personal food security insurance. To figure out which long-shelf-life items are best for you to store in your limited space, consider how they come together into meals (would this item be useless to you without a specific fresh ingredient?) and whether eating from the selection you choose to store would offer balanced nutrition.
Once you’ve calculated what you want to store based on these constraints, buy a little extra of your storage items each time you grocery shop, until you’ve reached your target quantities. Then all you have to do is remember to rotate through them: eat the oldest of each item first. If you learn that the enjoyment you get from a particular item declines when it reaches a certain age that’s younger than the manufacturer’s stated use-by, treat that as its new de facto use-by date going forward. If your dietary needs change, like if you discover a new allergy or decide you don’t like a given item any more, you can easily donate your extras to a local food pantry because everything you store will still be in date.
The trick to this process is to make it as easy as possible. If there’s a part of the food storage process that makes you look for an excuse to stop, change it so you don’t hate the process. Having food on hand is important preparedness for natural disasters as well as man-made ones, and being able to drop your grocery bills to 0 for a few weeks or months while still eating well is a wonderful trick to keep up your sleeve in the world of personal finance.
If there are new electronics that you want primarily because they’re new, like the latest phone, stocking up early won’t buy you much benefit. But if there are secondhand or older electronics that you’re certain you’ll want in the foreseeable future, increased competition for them in the future may suggest that prices will be better now than later.
Push officials to redirect corn subsidies for ethanol toward food? Keeping American corn production alive in case it suddenly was required was one of the reasons for said subsidies[1], after all.
(Of course, this doesn’t help the upstream portions of the food supply chain.)
...to the best of my knowledge, although I note that I can’t find anything explicitly mentioning this at a quick look.