Politics & Society
The Food Savers
They don’t trust the supermarkets, the global markets or their own purchasing power, for that matter. They may be right.
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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 their church to feed their family. They realized they needed to be ready to care for themselves and their two children if crisis 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 scenario Lilliston finds hard to imagine — there could be consequences.
But 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 disaster to global events, such as 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, the author of the forthcoming book “Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front,” said via email.
Families seem likelier to stockpile food after an emergency, said David Reeder, president of Captain Dave’s Survival Center, a disaster-preparation business in Raleigh, NC.
“Buying food in preparation for an emergency or a disaster is really no different than saving money for retirement,” he said in an email. “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” and 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. She thinks they could live for about nine months on the nuts, rice, beans and flour they keep, plus the tomatoes, peppers and squash she’s picked and preserved.
“It’s exciting knowing that, in case something happens, I’m prepared,” Murphy said. “It’s fun for me. It makes sense.”
Those who store food at home argue that this is a sensible way to prepare for a crisis --not just a storm or shortage, but also personal crisis, such as the loss of a job.
Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Heiselt