Why Should Anyone Buy More Food Than They Can Eat in One Week?

(Publication Note: After granting permission, three of my emergency food storage articles were published in the LDS Preparedness Manual, 2012 edition.)

Buying emergency food is not a waste of money. Buying emergency food is a smart decision for all the following reasons:

Investment: Between January 2008 and January 2016 the average price of food increased by approximately 40%. This is based on the price of 60 different food items that were monitored during this time period. Anyone who purchased food in January 2008 and who put that food into storage until January 2016 would have food that was worth 40% more than what they paid for it in 2008. More information about the increase in the price of food during the past few years is on my website here.
Insurance: People buy insurance on their homes, on their automobiles, and on their health. People who invest in food are buying insurance that their family will not starve to death during a serious long-term hard times event. However, unlike insurance premiums, when you buy emergency food you are purchasing something of tangible value that you get to keep in your home. Therefore you will have immediate access to that food if and when you need it, and you will not have to wait for an insurance company (or the government) to respond to your request for assistance.
Low Risk: If you invest in food that your family likes to eat, then the primary risk of loss would be that the food would go bad before your family eventually eats it. However, if you replace your emergency food as you gradually eat it before it has a chance to go bad, then there is a very low risk of loss on your investment.

Nobody likes to think about the possibility that their nation may become financially bankrupt. But the citizens of any nation could quickly find themselves in the situation that the people in Venezuela are being subjected to in April of 2014. The vast majority of the people in Venezuela have no jobs and no income. The government of Venezuela is placing identification marks on the forearms of their citizens so those citizens can stand for hours and hours and hours in a waiting line in order to obtain a trivial amount of food. (Note: Some citizens are voluntarily registering for fingerprint identification cards in place of the identification marks on their forearms.) You could avoid a similar fate if you will take positive action right now to provide a reasonable supply of emergency food for your family to eat during a serious long-term hard times event.

More information about some reasonable options for buying and storing emergency food are on my website at grandpappy.org.

Respectfully,
Grandpappy.

Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com