The Need For Food Storage: How Much Food Do You Have on Hand?

Is your family prepared for emergencies? My husband and I spoke with a network marketer who said that 95% of people just make a living. Whether they work as a store clerk or mechanic, or whether they’re a business owner, doctor, or lawyer, they have to keep trading their time into that profession in order for the income stream to continue. And for most of us, if we stopped working for a few weeks (because we lost our job, got sick or had to take care of a sick loved one, etc) it would create a big financial burden in a hurry.

And this not only applies to our finances but to our personal food supply. The majority of people only have enough food to sustain their families for a couple of weeks. For some people it may be more, but for others on a tight budget, it may be less. We’ve grown accustomed to living our lives day to day, knowing that we can go to the grocery store and get everything we need today, tomorrow, next week, and the week after that. And we give very little thought to food storage for emergency preparedness.

Think of all the things that could affect your personal food supply and/or your ability to get more food. Here are just a few things: tornado, flood, terrorist attack, civil unrest, massive power outages, inflation and even on a personal level, the loss of a job or income stream or a family emergency that prevents you from working.

Last summer we actually had a massive power outage that lasted for 3 days. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Alabama in the summer time, but trust me, you don’t want to be without power for 3 hours, much less 3 days! Anyway–we managed to get some ice and transfer some of our refrigerated goods over to coolers, but unfortunately we had to throw some things out. And during that time we had to spend some our money on fast food.

That same week, many households were without power for 5 days. I remember reading in the paper about a lady who was in desperate straits because she’d just bought groceries before the power outage and now all her food was spoiled, and she simply couldn’t afford to take her family out to eat again. And because she only got paid every two weeks, she was in a quandary over how she could get groceries for the following week.

But what if the situation had been more dire? What if it had been a longterm problem?  For us, going 3 days without power seemed to drive us mad, not just because of the lack of internet, tv, and other luxeries, but because there was no way to cook our food or keep it cold. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in that situation for a week, a month, or longer.  Can you?

We often read articles about emergency preparedness: having smoke detectors, a weather radio, a home evacuation plan, etc. But often food and water, the most vital things to our survival don’t get a lot of  mention.  I’ve been looking in to this topic, and as I prepared for the survival seed giveaway that I’m doing this week, I got inspired to create some other posts on this topic, starting with this one–sort of a mini series.