Originally Posted by gwd
The guys they talked to were putting hay out in the snow covered pastures for winter feed. It was Missouri or Montana I think.. a Northern state. When I was young I lived in a dairy farming area in the north and the farmers needed to grow hay for the winter even though the cows went out in the fields every day. One neighbor had no cattle but just grew hay to sell to the dairy farmers. I think the guys who were being interviewed couldn't grow enough hay this year because of the weather. The comments to the post have been interesting, I'm surprised it has had an effect on the food supply so quickly. In spite of our fat epidemic if it is true that the small percentage increase in ethanol fuel use has already affected the food supply then our nutrition supply system must be unstable.
we live in a "just in time delivery" world now, big stock piles of things do not exist unless its petroleum or stuff we cant get rid off, like sulfur, big yellow piles of that crap everywhere
while our advances with technology are amazing sometimes, they are also vulnerable to sudden systemic collapse because of scale and interdependence of systems
here in the city where I live, average grocery store has about 3 days of stock, less of perishables
closest fuel depot and also a pipeline hub, they keep about 2-3 weeks tops of fuel around in tanks
there are ZERO big farms locally which make food for people, its all soy and feed corn
locally the biggest producer of anything is probably Annheiser Busch, also biggest water consumer, followed right behind it by the pepsi bottling plant
next small town over builds honda cars and motorcycles, and lots of the satellite parts makers are here in town
most of the electricity for the city is from about 60 miles away, coal fired, lots of it, a trainload every day
typical US midwestern city, we store nothing, produce little, and import everything, this is not a safe or stable way to do things, couple of things break and you may be waiting weeks for some majorly important items