Elections and the Supply and Demand for Good Food

Back in November 2008, my family and I were living in Missouri.  The looming specter of an Obama presidency panicked many people of my faith into purchasing more food for their storage.  Many items at the Home Storage Centers, including the popular white wheat, were out of stock.  There was plenty of red wheat available, and so I ended up buying several cases of that.  (And I wouldn’t say I was panicked; it’s just that until very recently, I’d felt that we never had enough food.)

The rush on food at the Home Storage Centers is generally an election cycle thing, mostly when it’s feared that a Democrat will take the presidency.  In 2020 we were far removed from a Home Storage Center, so I didn’t get to see things personally, but I did buy from the online store.  And many products were sold out then.  And it was sometimes months before staples were back in stock.  Harvest Right freeze dryers were in short supply, but that was probably more due to COVID. 

Things were different with this election cycle, and I’m not sure why.   I feared a Kamala presidency far more than an Obama one.  Perhaps because she’s more of an idiot; perhaps because I can’t believe I live in such close proximity to people who think she would have done a good job.  What I have yet to figure out is why everything is still in stock at the Home Storage Center online.  No panic buying.  I never heard anyone at church discussing adding to their food storage.  Maybe they’ve all become complacent.

I did see a lot of people online buying loads of canned goods and requesting input on the emergency food storage buckets sold at Costco and online, or asking about the shelf life of MREs.  However, there was next to nothing asked about the most critical items, the staples.  Salt, oil, sugar, eggs.  Beans. 

I thought it might be worthwhile to review the true value of these items in a crisis

In the Utah War, when Johnston’s Army was sent to subjugate the Mormons, the army had their salt spoiled.  Far removed from their supply chain, they paid the Indians $5 per pound for salt.  An ounce of gold was $20 then.  So that salt cost ¼ of an ounce of gold.  Figuring $2800 for an ounce of gold today (it’s not there yet, but will be soon, and besides, it makes the math much easier), that’s $700 for 1 pound of salt today.  It makes sense to stock up on such a valuable commodity.

Chicken eggs sold for 50 cents to a dollar in San Francisco during the Gold Rush.  So figure 1/20 or 1/40 of an ounce of gold, so $70-140 for an egg.  Ouch.  I wrote last year of a Korean couple who traded eggs for land, 4 eggs for 35 square feet of land.  They built quite the empire.  In this country, one man traded six chickens for a motorcycle during the Depression.  Chickens and eggs are valuable.

F. Enzio Busche wrote of his experiences in WWII that a quart of cooking oil could be traded for 3 bushels of apples or 300 pounds of potatoes.  I’m still paying less than $6 per quart of coconut oil.  There’s no way today that I could buy a bushel of apples for less than $2 or 50 pounds of potatoes for $1.  But it the future?  Of course, that’s only if I had oil to spare.  It’s far too valuable a commodity to trade away frivolously.

He also noted that honey was three times more valuable than sugar.  I store honey, but not exclusively.  I prefer baking with sugar.  And while honey does have medicinal uses, and I also use it medicinally, I far prefer sugar for making my elderberry syrup.  Store what you are going to use.

The baubles, even precious family heirlooms, will be traded for food when people are hungry, if those with food will accept the trade.  In WWII Germany, a family traded a jeweled watch worth $7,000 at the time for a sack of beans.  Another family traded valuables for a goat to provide milk for their children.  (Ignore the fact that though “well-educated” they couldn’t tell the difference between a nanny and a billy.  Billy goats don’t make milk.)  Don’t forget to store the (powdered) milk, especially if you have children. 

Salt, eggs/oil, honey/sugar, and milk are basics.  They’re the essentials that desperate people will trade for.  While many will choose to believe that the crisis has been averted now that Trump has been elected, such is not likely the case.  In fact, fun times are just around the corner.

So, panic early, beat the rush, make sure you have the essentials, and you won’t find yourself in a desperate situation when your family needs to eat.

Links to related posts:

More on Chickens and Eggs  

Survivalists, Preppers, and the Forty-Niners  

Food Storage and Learning from History  

More Food Storage and Learning from History

The Medicinal Uses of Pepper