Anecdotal and I'd love to be wrong about this, buuuut I'm in the rural midwest rn and all of the wheat fields in like a 75 mile radius from me look like they're absolutely fucked.
It's basically all turned gold already which is super early for it, especially because it's still short as fuck, like maybe a foot tall — it's usually still green until it's like 4 feet tall. The people who've lived here for a long time have been talking about how abnormal it is. I'm not a wheat scientist and haven't really gotten into with anyone who knows what they're actually talking about so I don't totally know what it means, but I know it doesn't mean anything good
Prob a good idea to stock up on food if you've got the means
:doomer:
If you have the space + money:
Flour is much cheaper in bulk. 25 lbs is ~30-50% cheaper bought all at once rather then 5 lbs at a time.
Storage is very important. I recommend a 5 gallon food grade bucket with a gamma lid.
Pest control is important with bulk food storage. Things that help include putting bay leaves in the flour, using an oxygen-killing pack in with the flour before sealing it for the first time, and using a secondary container for ~3-5 libs at a time so that the storage container is opened infrequently.
For non-flour items, I recommend using the same strategy but for rice and beans. Rice can be kept free of pets by baking it at 150 for 30 minutes before storage. You can do the same for beans though the quality degrades a tiny bit (beans have fewer pests anyways).
1 bucket of each is enough food for 2 people for a couple months all by itself (plus a vitamin to avoid malnutrition). Not a bad way to buffer yourself from food price swings. If you get some bulk fat like a gallon of refined coconut oil or peanut butter, you'll have a ton more calories for cheap. I'd say the total cost for everything I just described is around $150-250 and would be enough calories for 2 people for 3ish months. Add some bulk spices and canned tomatoes and it could even taste good.
Also all of these tips work for mutual aid buys and storage if you have access to a kitchen.
Great tips thanks comrade :rosa-salute:
:rat-salute:
Thank you for your service. I'm a little worried about the pests. How foolproof is the is the gamma lid and bay leaves? Also what is a oxygen-killing pack? Lastly, what does the baking the rice before do?
All good questions!
The gamma lid makes it so that you can properly seal the thing and then reopen it again later without needing special tools. Most 5 gallon pails use kids that basically require muscle + a tool to open. The bay leaves are very easy of course and you can get them in bulk super cheap.
In terms of efficacy, both work very well. If you are careful about handling and keeping your space pest-free, you will rarely actually need the oxygen-killing sachets. They're more like an insurance policy.
They're usually called oxygen scavengers or oxygen absorbers. If you put a food safe one in a sealed container with, say, rice, it'll eat up the oxygen and do a good job killing any pests that were present in the food. Makes it so that you don't open up the container later and find a bunch of bugs. The container doesn't even have to perfectly seal, just be sealed well enough for long enough (a few days, e.g.), so this method works with tightly-closed gamma lids. After the initial anoxic environment treatment you can use the food like normal.
Kills any insects that were in it. Example: a cute little weevil or its larva might be in the or even in a grain of rice. The heat will kill them, preventing them from multiplying.
I should've also mentioned that putting a bag of rice in the freezer for a day or two also works great, I just don't normally have freezer space.
just eat the pests, or pick them out if you're really too squeamish
it's not like they devour the entire bag of dry beans. I've had beans/lentils/flour for 3 years that only had maybe 5 tiny gnats in the entire bag. I promise you won't care about that if that bag of wheat actually becomes important.
Weevils, flour beetles, moths, etc will get out and infest your whole pantry / food stock if you aren't diligent. Eating a couple weevils / picking them out isn't too bad. Decontaminating hundreds of beetles from a food storage location is just the pits.