Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Interesting about "just in time inventory"

Survive Anything–Food Crisis
November 30th, 2010
http://carolynbaker.net/2010/11/30/survive-anything-food-crisis/

Food production is one of the most essential concerns of any society. Without 
direct availability and ease of consumption, without the consistent flow of 
agricultural goods, every nation existing today (except the most primitive) 
would immediately find its infrastructure crumbling and its people in a 
furious panic. It’s strange to me, then, that long term independent food 
planning is the one concern that many Americans seem to take most for 
granted. Firearms and ammo, camping gear and bug-out-bags, MRE’s, beans, and 
rice; these are the easiest part of your survival foundation. The hard part 
is not storage of goods, but devising a solid and practical plan for 
sustainability in the long term. This starts with the capacity to support 
your own agriculture regardless of how long the grid is down, even if it is 
down indefinitely.

Understandably, there will be some people who do not have enough land to 
implement many of these strategies. They should still know the fundamentals 
and be ready to apply them at a retreat location or within a community should 
the opportunity arise.
.........
   Emaciated Grocery Chains

Last winter, I witnessed perhaps the most incredible snow storm I have ever 
seen in my life. A low pressure system punished the Northeast with downpour 
after downpour, stopping most road travel and cutting power to millions for 
at least a week. Being that the average family has only a week’s worth of 
food or less in their pantry, you can imagine the chaos that unfolded. Those 
grocery stores with backup power were flooded with customers buying armloads 
of batteries, water, ice chests, and, of course, foods that don’t require 
refrigeration. Now, what I want you to imagine, is what would have happened 
if no grocery stores had been open that week. What would have happened if 
they had never reopened? How many people would have been in the very real 
position of starving to death? From what I observed that winter…far too many…

The problem of storage and backstock is widespread in the U.S. and the 
culprit is actually one which we have been trained to admire; efficiency. It 
is because of the over-application of efficiency in grocery models and in the 
freight sector that most outlets carry little to no backstock in goods. 
Instead, they order goods as quickly as they sell out, refilling shelves on a 
product by product basis. This means that in most grocers, what you see on 
the shelf, is all that they have. The speed of trucking deliveries makes this 
business model possible, but its operation suffers from a seriously fatal 
flaw…

Grocery stores may seem like a bounty of goods at first glance, but if 
freight shipments shut down, or even slowed, those aisles would empty within 
the span of a few days. Many households in America operate on the same faulty 
“efficiency”. They rely on the weekly trip to the grocer to maintain the 
pantry while also attempting to save money by reducing backstock. It’s a 
frayed rope holding up too much weight, a completely inflexible system that 
cannot withstand any deviation from the set routine. One unexpected disaster 
could render the entire food and agriculture distribution network immobile.

Many grocery chains also function on a line of credit from banks while 
operating at a loss. Profits are poured directly into the liabilities the 
companies incur from loans and then more money is borrowed to continue 
ordering goods. Some stores in the chain (flagship stores) usually bring in 
enough money to cover the red ink of the other branches, however, what if 
banks were to cut off credit completely to a grocery chain? Or maybe ALL 
grocery chains? The cycle of debt, to sales, to profit, to debt, becomes 
disrupted. Any stores that rely solely on credit to stay open for business 
would immediately lose the ability to bring in new stock. Again, we are faced 
with empty shelves in less than a week.

This scenario is entirely possible in the U.S. today, especially in the event 
that big banks institute capital retention in order to protect themselves 
from a further collapse of investment markets. Banks have already restricted 
loans to consumers down to the bare minimum. A restriction of loans to the 
business sector in the near future is not that far fetched.