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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

The alternative is we build up a stockpile of food in a similar way to the US strategic oil stockpile. If oil is worth having in storage in case something bad happens it would seem obvious that food should be in the same category.

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Food spoils so a stockpile like that isn't quite feasible. Sure we'll be able to get some foods that store well and can last for years but that's a small subset of food and even that food not all of it lasts for more than two years.

It's just not realistic. Sure we can significantly enlarge our buffer but two or more years? I can't see that happening in any practical sense.

Most grains can be stored for years under the right conditions. Sure the quality will decline over that time, but given we are feeding a large amount of grain to livestock this decline is manageable.

Even having a single years buffer would be very worthwhile. As I mentioned in the OP if we have a catastrophic event in the northern summer the poor are in serious trouble.

The problem is the food you are storing is constantly going bad. So you need to recreate the entire massive food stockpile every year or so, in order to have it ready when the time comes. We'd have to find a way to efficiently cycle food through the stockpile and back to consumers before it became useless. But I doubt consumers are going to be lining up to buy old food. The food would be expensive to buy fresh, then wouldn't sell for much when it is old. It would be a crazy expensive program, and it would increase the price of fresh food for everyone.

Not if the stored grain was fed to livestock. We already do this in practice as we keep the high quality grain for direct human consumption, while the lower quality grain is fed to livestock.

Once the stockpile was established and the process of cycling it set up, then the cost should be relatively minor.

More importantly what is the alternative? Let everyone starve?

That does seem like a sensible plan.

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