I'm not a "doomsday prepper". I don't own 1,000 cans of pork and beans and I haven't dug an underground bunker in my back yard. BUT. Something happened the other day that made me think that perhaps a little more preparation might be a good idea. I never like taking things to extremes and I hate assuming the worst...but sometimes, people who assume the worst are the ones that don't get burned in the long run.
In the course of my job I had an opportunity to talk to someone who was in Northern California. We got on the subject of weather, and she talked about how the drought there was affecting them. She went on to say that her father owned a cattle ranch, and that because of the drought, they were having to slaughter six months early, which meant they were losing thousands and thousands of dollars. "Your food, " she said, "Is about to get very, very expensive, because they are going to have to make up for what they're losing right now."
Not many people actually stop and think about where food comes from. It sounds stupid, but we've gotten so accustomed to drive-throughs, carry-outs, and grocery stores that we don't stop and think about what it takes to get the food to where it is. Someone had to grow it. Someone had to make it. Someone had to load it onto a truck. Someone had to drive the truck to get it to a distribution center. Someone else had to go to the distribution center to pick it up and bring it to a store. (I used to work in a grocery distribution center; I know.)
What happens if at any time, there is some sort of catastrophe along the way? Think of food production as a giant spider web, and you're the spider at the center. Think of farmers, cattlemen, truck drivers, grocery stores...they're all the strings that hold the web in place. Have you ever seen what happens to a spider web if you wipe out one of its supporting anchors? It becomes unstable. Eventually, it collapses. The spider has to rebuild or go somewhere else and start over.
The point of food storage and preparation is not, necessarily, to survive the apocalypse, although many people are preparing for that. It's to survive the personal catastrophes that sometimes rear their ugly heads in our lives. If, for example, you live along the coast, and a Hurricane decides to blow through town, then that is a personal catastrophe. It won't affect the entire United States, but it might interrupt the flow of goods and services to YOU. So you need to be ready for that. If you lose your job, and it takes longer to find employment than you thought...again, preparation can get you through that. I know of one man who was unemployed for a year and his family survived off of their food storage. If a cattle raiser in California has to slaughter his animals due to lack of water, thus losing tons of money and then having to charge more to make up the difference...then food will still be available. It just might cost more than you want to pay...or more than some people CAN pay.
If what my colleague in California says is true (and I have no reason to believe she would make it up), then now might be a good time to get ready.
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