Captain Rawles,
I just saw a very shocking statistic from the USDA: 50% of the US population resides within two miles of three different grocery stores. There are 150,000,000 people in this country who have never been more than two miles away from three different sources of food.
I have made a career out of the food industry, most recently in the grocery sector. I know first hand how oblivious people are to where food actually comes from, what unsightly things go into the food supply to produce a sufficient volume to keep the shelves of Wal-Mart stocked (think the of horrors of Monsanto, their GMOs and chemicals), and how many resources are actually consumed in getting that carton of strawberries to the shelf of a Whole Foods in New York in the middle of December.
Statistically only 3% of the population works in the farming and agriculture industry, 9 million people grow the food that feeds the other 291 million people (not counting the millions we feed by giving food assistance to other counties). As anyone with the simplest bit of knowledge can deduce, the food supply in this country could very easily be disrupted, and the fallout from a disruption would be disastrous. I feel confident in saying that most of the “prepper” community is aware that when the shelves in the store go bare, many people will starve. I always assumed 30-40% of people would suffer from food shortages, I had no idea that when the shelves go bare HALF of the country would starve to death in month (if they don’t kill each other first to take what’s left of each other’s foodstuffs, but then again the people who are dependent upon a grocery store are the same people who detest firearms, so most likely neighbors will be beating each other to death with tennis rackets and golf clubs, but I digress).
This information from the USDA serves as a sobering reminder of the importance of being able to produce our own food. Wether it be gardening, farming, livestock, hunting, stockpiling, or something else, when the shelves go bare, its going to be an unpleasant time for 150,000,000 people.
My very best regards,
A. CP-FS (Certified Professional in Food Safety)