@daved
I am very interested in hearing more. Could you learn as much as you can about the food chain system so you can share that with us?
What are all the weaknesses? What kind of things could happen to disrupt the food supply?
Ok, after giving this some thought I have to say that the one thing that is most vulnerable is the transportation system. Even food bought at a farmers' market is transported at least twice (once from the farm to the market, and once from the market to your home). Everything you get from the grocery store is transported MANY times. 1st from wherever the raw materials come from (which most likely is several suppliers depending on what we are talking about and the number of ingredients) to the manufacturing plant (or bakery, cannery, whatever). Then probably to a large central warehouse, possibly to a freight terminal (or several), maybe to a intermediate warehouse, a smaller warehouse, the store, and finally to your home.
Here's an example: We sells some items made in South Carolina. They travel from there via common carrier through who knows how many terminals on their way to my warehouse in southern Wisconsin. I ship some of them to a larger warehouse in Milwaukee that doesn't even carry these items for the area it services. From there they go to a smaller warehouse in norther Wisconsin who also doesn't sell these items locally. They get loaded on a truck going to upper Michigan to a few small distributors. They put them on their route trucks and take them to the stores in their area. If I am out of these items I may have to track them down at one of our Chicago warehouses introducing another step or two into the process. To top this all off, I only have a truck going to the Milwaukee warehouse once a week, and he only has one going to northern Wisconsin once a week. They only ship to Michigan once every two weeks. So - if one step doesn't happen when it's supposed to it could lead to shortages approaching a month. Here's where living in a bigger town works to your advantage. Some of those steps can be eliminated.
With each additional stop the items make, the bigger the threat that something could go wrong. Maybe there are riots in a big city many miles away from your nice safe small town. If the food going to your area has to come through that town it may not make it. It doesn't even have to be something as major as that. A work slow down in a warehouse somewhere in the chain can end up delaying deliveries which might mean missed connections and long delays in deliveries. I often get truck drivers complaining about how long it takes to get loaded at certain places. Depending on the number of hours they've been on the road (and if they are running legal) a few hours delay may mean they have to spend the night somewhere instead of driving through and making the delivery on time.
I guess one thing I should point out is that there actually is some redundancy built in to the system. That comes from the DSD (direct store delivery) system. These are the many vendors that service grocery stores on a daily basis. Only some of the products people buy come through the grocery stores' own warehouse system. The rest are delivered by other companies. Some dairy, soda, bread, snacks, etc are all delivered via DSD. (you can sometimes check the shelf tags of the items you buy and see if they say DSD on them) So basically if the Kroeger (or whoever your local grocer is) warehouse burns to the ground, the store will still have access to many items even without their own deliveries. The downside of this is that the DSD items are generally name brand more expensive items.
Bad weather is another cause of problems in the system (besides just causing transportation issues). If there are sales planned for items, it is relatively easy to order extra to cover the additional movement. When a winter storm hits, there isn't time to get more to cover the additional demand. (there is generally a 8 to 14 day lead time on everything I carry in my warehouse - although some specialty holiday items can be several months) When people hear there is bad weather coming they all run to the store. There is usually enough to cover this additional demand, but it may cause some localized shortages.
One thing I have learned over the years though is if you run out of one thing, you run out of EVERYTHING (not literally everything, but all kinds of stuff) Say someone wants to buy regular potato chips, but there are none on the shelf. They will either buy a different brand, or a different type or flavor. That increased demand on the other item causes it to run short and the process repeats itself.
Another thing I've run across is a bad crop causing shortages. Generally this isn't a huge problem. Maybe there are certain things that are only grown in small areas that could be wiped out completely, but everything I've dealt with has been able to be found from another grower in a different area and any shortage is a kind of hiccup in the system rather than a major problem. I can't speak to this too much since I am only responsible for ordering finished goods, not raw materials so I don't know the mechanics behind that.
The last thing I think I have for now is the fact that there is only a short supply anywhere along the chain. It all comes down to money. No one wants to pay for huge amounts of inventory. It ties up dollars that can be spent elsewhere. It ends up wasting shelf life sitting in warehouse racks, and just isn't the way things are done in normal operations. Stores get daily deliveries, warehouses get daily deliveries - that's the way it is, and it works quite well when nothing goes wrong. Ideally for me I want the last case of an item going out the door just as a fresh pallet is going into the pick location. It usually isn't that precise, but that is the ideal situation.
You can't count on the stores or warehouses that supply them to have stock if a SHTF situation. It is entirely up to you to take care of storing food at home.
I think that's all I've got for now. I'll add more if anything else comes to mind.
