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:
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.