Let’s assume that for some unknown reason all food production in the US stopped today. Assume that livestock stays alive but doesn’t reproduce. All crops stop growing and we have to rely upon food in grain elevators, warehouses, etc. How many weeks/months food is there for the US population?
“Food” is not a single thing. For example, apples have a storage life of maybe 120 days and eggs only about a month, so it doesn’t matter how many of them you start with, you’ll need more in a matter of weeks.
Current predictions are that we’ll need about 5.4 billion bushels of corn to feed cattle this year, and several billion more for pork, poultry, etc. Since the 2008 corn harvest was something like 12 billion bushels, if none of the crop was exported, used for ethanol, distilled into whiskey, etc., and it was able to be stored indefinitely, it might be stretched for 18 months or so.
On the other hand, U.S. production of wheat was put at 2.5 billion bushels for 2008-2009, with demand at 960 million bushels. Again, assuming no exports or other uses and indefinite storage, we might get 30 months out of current supplies.
Of course, the U.S. exports huge amounts of food, so if all food production in this country stopped immediately, the world would run short pretty fast.
Isn’t there a strategic hollowed out mountain full of cheese in Vermont somewhere? They needed to give dairy farmers a subsidy and look like they were actively preparing in case of a shooting war with USSR, so that’s what they came up with. Or am I imagining this?
Food going bad shouldn’t be an issue, we can keep whatever there is frozen until needed. There are currently ~100 million heads of cattle in the US. The average cow yields approximately 500 pounds of meat. That’s a lot of beef. Add in all the other kinds livestock on hand, and I think it would be close to enough meat to feed everybody in the US for a year. Thats just meat, add in all the existing food already packaged and in warehouses and stores, PLUS all the existing Raw ingredients for food, plus all the food currently being harvested, plus all the existing livestock feed, and finally all the existing pet food I bet there’s enough to feed the U.S. population for maybe 5 years.