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The economic climate has a lot of people scrambling to stock up on food right now. Add to an uncertain job market the food shortage caused by extreme weather conditions across the country, and we could be looking at a perfect storm on the horizon.
Do you read about people’s giant stockpiles of food and wonder, “Where the heck do they find those giant 50-pound bags of grains?” or “How on earth do they afford that extra food on top of the high cost of their day-to-day groceries?”
My inbox has been flooded lately with people looking for ways to rapidly expand their food storage supplies. I wrote about building a 30-day food supply quickly, but honestly, that article is for absolute beginners with no stockpile whatsoever. If you’re working on building a serious, long-term food supply, it’s going to be a lot more cost effective to purchase bulk quantities of high-quality staples.
A lot of us are looking for reliable sources of organic food. The grocery store is not your best bet. Most of the time, they don’t sell in the quantities we’re seeking, and often the quality is low. I personally use Amazon to build my grain stockpile, because it gives me access to a wide range of vendors, many of whom offer free shipping. Below, I’ll list a few of the items that I personally purchase on a regular basis to add to my pantry.
Here’s why grains should be the focus of your bulk purchases.
One of the mainstays of a prepper’s pantry is grains.
I know, you’re thinking, “Wait, I try to avoid grains as much as possible!” It may be true that in your everyday life of working 9-5 in an office, then doing some hobby gardening that grains aren’t as vital, but in a long-term situation, grains are the best way to stock up on storable food. They provide more calories that can be stored for a long time than anything else you can put back.
If you have issues with gluten, don’t despair. There are lots of non-gluten grains you can store. A simple omission of wheat products is the only adjustment you’ll need to make to your stockpile. You can focus more on corn, oats, and rice.
Here are just a few of the reasons that grains are such a valuable addition to your stockpile:
They’re high in carbohydrates. While this might not be desirable in our everyday life right now, in the aftermath of a disaster, you’ll be burning off calories almost as fast as you can consume them.
They’re a great way to extend a meal. How do you feed a family of 4 on what should be one serving of meat? Easy – add it to rice or noodles. It’s an inexpensive way to make the most of pricier ingredients.
They store well for long periods of time. With the exception of brown rice, which has more oils that can go rancid, most grains can last for years if properly stored. They’re the perfect “store it and forget it” food for the pantry.
I strongly recommend organic grains. Yes, they’re more expensive, but they are not doused in pesticides or potentially genetic modified. The high nutritional quality is well worth the added expense. See it as an investment in health.
How many pounds of grains should you store?
Food storage calculators recommend 300 pounds of grains per person for a one year supply. For a family of four, that is a whopping 1200 pounds of food that you should store if you are trying to build a one year pantry!
That sounds like a really daunting number until you remember that it is divided over many different items. Most grains can be purchased in very large quantities at a greatly reduced price. When purchasing in amounts over 20 pounds, your food storage methods become particularly important. When deciding what storage methods you intend to use, you must ask yourself whether you intend for these goods to be your long term food storage, remaining untouched unless disaster strikes, or whether you intend to rotate them from the pantry to the kitchen, using them and replenishing your pantry as needed.
When purchasing in amounts over 20 pounds, your food storage methods become particularly important. When deciding what storage methods you intend to use, you must ask yourself whether you intend for these goods to be your long term food storage, remaining untouched unless disaster strikes, or whether you intend to rotate them from the pantry to the kitchen, using them and replenishing your pantry as needed. Check out this detailed information on food storage methods. Do NOT skimp here. What could be worse than buying all of that food, only to discover it is spoiled or loaded with bugs when you need it the most?
Get good buys by doing your stockpile shopping online.
As I mentioned above, I’ve found that Amazon has a pretty good selection of bulk grains, and many are available in organic varieties. I make a point of ordering at least 20 pounds of a grain each pay period. It’s a nominal amount of money that allows me to build a stockpile of food insurance. Be sure to look for grains with free shipping, though, or the cost could be prohibitive.
When compared with purchasing the same items in smaller quantities at the store, particularly if you opt for the organic, non-GMO varieties, ordering online seems to be the best deal. Ordering online adds the convenience of delivery right to your door if you so desire. I used to order directly from a mill when I lived in Canada, but I had to add shipping costs, as well as a hefty minimum purchase. With resellers like Amazon, you can purchase smaller quantities more frequently, which can mesh better with a tight budget.
Some items are better to purchase locally, however. Pasta, cold cereal, and crackers, to name a few, are generally not the best deals when purchased online, because they can often be found as loss leaders at the grocery store. For those items, watch the flyers for good sales in your area.
What grains should you store?
Following are some of the most common additions to a prepper’s pantry.
I’ve found that I can usually order these online less expensively than I could purchase them in smaller sizes locally, even with the very best of sales going on. I’ve embedded a link into the products, so simply click on the underlined words to go right to the item. All of the items below are things that reside in my own pantry, neatly repackaged into long-term storage containers. At the time of posting this article, they all had free shipping.
Rice
Please, please don’t buy rice from China. While it might be dirt cheap, their food standards are low. You do NOT want your stockpile to be made up of food like that. If you can’t afford organic or eco-farmed (this means there was no use of chemical pesticides but it isn’t certified organic), please buy American-grown rice.
25 pounds of organic brown rice (Lundberg)
25 pounds of eco-farmed white rice
Flour
25 pounds of organic whole wheat flour
25 pounds of organic white flour
Wheat
35 pounds of organic wheat (already in a bucket for long-term storage)
50 pounds of organic winter wheat
Quinoa
10 pounds of organic red quinoa
Cornmeal
25 pounds of organic corn meal
Barley
25 pounds of organic pearled barley
Oats
50 pounds of organic quick-cooking oats
25 pounds of organic steel-cut oats
Bonus: Support American farms!
Nearly all of the recommended products are grown in the USA, with the exception of the quinoa, which is from Bolivia. I was unable to find out where the corn for the grits was grown, but Great River Mill responded to me immediately to let me know that the listed products were all products of American organic farms.
For Canadians:
These products won’t be available to be shipped to Canada. When I lived in Ontario, my favorite resource was this:
They did not offer free shipping, but the prices were very reasonable and the quality was fantastic.
By Daisy Luther – www.theorganicprepper.ca
Edit – MFSP
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I don’t understand why someone stockpiling food, presumably for the purposes of surviving a “the perfect storm” would require their grains to be organic.
I think it illustrates peoples complete misunderstanding of just how difficult things could become. It would be like choosing to die of thirst instead of drinking bottled tap water because it may contain fluoride. People facing real disasters have resorted to eating human flesh and drinking urine. The debatable but miniscule benefit of eating organic grain is going to be revealed as a drop in the ocean compared to real problems.
Respectfully submitted and open to discussion.
“It would be like choosing to die of thirst instead of drinking bottled tap water because it may contain fluoride.”
Hi Dave. My take on it is different from yours. I don’t think the author is saying, “WTSHTF, I must have organic.” I think her perspective is similar to mine: why not store the best quality food I can right now?
For my part, I believe the benefit to organic foods is more than “debatable but miniscule”. I’m a vegetarian and I eat organic as much as possible now. If things fall apart, I would fully expect to change my diet. But now, when high-quality, pesticide, locally-grown food is readily available, that’s what I’m choosing for my diet and my storage.
There’s also a possibility that pesticides considered safe (ha) now might be deemed unsafe five years from now. If that’s what I’ve stored, then that food is potentially harmful and I’ve wasted resources. I’d rather not take that chance when I have the option to store food I believe is safe and nutritious.
Respectfully submitted and open to discussion as well. 🙂
Thanks for the response. I have found that the more plainly I express my opinion, the more likely an honest opinion is returned. And honest discussion leads to learning.
Here is my point; if there some sort of societal collapse, the benefits of organic food will have no bearing on your quality or length of life. The lack of a modern hospitals and their proven life sustaining medicine will be what ends your life. Or the violence brought on by the control of gangs and war-lords. Or the invasion of a foreign country. Or the lack of heat in the winter etc.
If you are preparing for perhaps a one or two month disaster before society recovers, again, one or two months or organic food vs factory prepared oats for example will not make a difference.
I do support your right to choose what you eat. I suspect that lowering my red meat intake, as my Doctor has suggested, would be very good for me. Pesticides, in my opinion present a double edged sword. Properly managed, along with the introduction of genetically modified foods, we are able to provide much more food for the 7 billion people on earth. Eat a GMO banana with trace amounts of pesticide or have no banana? I guess I would rather have a non-GMO banana without pesticides but are there enough to go around?
It reminds me of cartoon I saw with two cave-men sitting around discussing why they have only a 40 year life-span. They eat organic, sleep at night, get plenty of exercise etc. The reality is, in spite of our societies negatives, we are still ahead. What is shortening the next generation’s life span is obesity and the lack of exercise. Not GMO’s. Pesticides? You may have a point there.
Here is another thing that I see leading people to make poor choices. People have confused their right to decide and to have an opinion with truth. Just because you believe GMO’s or vaccines are harmful it doesn’t make those beliefs true. Should people be free to choose not to get a vaccine because they believe they are bad? Perhaps. What if that choice harms others?
What should be more important to people is the truth and what can be demonstrated as the best informed choice. An opinion can be wrong if it is based purely on fact; when a person doesn’t have all the facts.
Do you believe that the world would be better of without GMO’s and pesticides? And if you do, why?
I do think the world would be better off without GMOs and pesticides. Mostly because they *aren’t* being properly managed. Companies like Monsanto aren’t interested in feeding the world. They are interested in the most profit in the shortest amount of time. I’m all for making a profit but not at the expense of the entire world. Companies like that don’t think long-term. They don’t take the time to think through all the potential problems. And we don’t know the unknown problems. We don’t know what we don’t know – and companies who are for profit over everything don’t consider that. Look at the huge honeybee problem. It seems to be connected to overuse of pesticides and GMOs – we aren’t sure but that’s as much a reason to discontinue them – we can’t rule them out as the cause of the honeybee die-off so we should stop until we are sure. If we lose honeybees, we might as well start making Soylent Green – our food supply will be devastated.
Mostly I think of GMOs and all the other short-term plans to produce more food are like the mongoose in Hawaii. They were imported in the late 1800s to take care of the rat problem in the sugar cane fields. Except they didn’t only eat rats. They’ve wiped out species and made others nearly extinct. And they carry leptospirosis. All because the importers didn’t think long term.
I believe that organic and non-GMOs *are* better all the way around. And when I buy these foods for my current diet and my stockpile, I have even more opportunities to vote with my dollars.
You make some excellent points. I agree that many corporations are profit driven with a heavy emphasis on short or maybe mid-term gain. If something bad happens in 20 years its “somebody else’s” problem. If I get rich at least I will be okay. These are very irresponsible attitudes.
I still think science is our best way forward, even if there are some negatives. Nothing is perfect. But our exchange has given me a new perspective on watching how science is being used or misused.
I still think that stockpiling organic grain in preparation for a societal collapse is the equivalent or preparing for war by making sure your buttons are polished. If the world collapsed, truly collapsed, and someone offered you a bowl of porridge, asking if it was organic would be the most irrelevant question you could ask. If you are planning to eat a healthy meal or responsibly sustain agriculture in the long-term, the question is valid.
“If we lose honeybees, we might as well start making Soylent Green -”
“Native bees are an unappreciated treasure, with 4,000 species from tiny Perdita to large carpenter bees, they can be found anywhere in North America where flowers bloom. Most people don’t realize that there were no honey bees in America until the white settlers brought hives from Europe. These resourceful insects promptly managed to escape domestication, forming swarms and setting up housekeeping in hollow trees, other cavities or even exposed to the elements just as they had been doing in their native lands. Native pollinators, in particular bees, had been doing all the pollination in this continent before the arrival of that import from the Old World. They continue to do a great deal of it, especially when it comes to native plants.”
Source; http://www.bugguide.net/node/view/475348
Ask someone locally that keeps and is knowledgable about bees, or plants, it is surprising how different North America was 100, 150, 200 or more years ago. People from 200+ years ago would not recognize many of the flora we take for granted today…