The Norwegian government on Tuesday signed a deal to start stockpiling grain, saying the COVID-19 pandemic, a war in Europe and climate change have made it necessary.
The deal to store 30,000 tons of grain in 2024 and 2025 was signed by agriculture and food minister Geir Pollestad, finance minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum and four private companies. The wheat, which will belong to the Norwegian government, will be stored in already existing facilities by the companies in facilities across the country. Three of the companies will store at least 15,000 tons this year.
Companies “are free to invest in new facilities and decide for themselves where they want to store the emergency grain, but they must make the grain available to the state if needed,” the government said.
Norway’s ministry for agriculture and food said, “the building up of a contingency stock of food grains is about being prepared for the unthinkable.”
I really don’t get why we ever stopped doing things like this. It just makes sense. It makes sense for any product that can be stored for a time, not having it would cause problems, and it can have spikes of use. If I can just convince corps that it would be government subsidies of warehouse storage maybe we would do it more.
Because it is expensive and when your grandparents don’t remember a time when food was scarce, but a lot of people can remember a time when money was tight it seems to make sense to not spend all that money on storage. (Until you reach the rich level any additional money goes to things like larger houses or nicer houses which means you live paycheck to paycheck and have about the same amount of money to spend every day - after all the deductions to pay for the above - as someone who is poor)
This is the same reason infrastructure in all areas is often left to rot - maintenance costs money and if the effects of not doing it are not immediately visible it is easy to stop doing it even if overall it makes your life worse in the long run.
Of course the above is easy to say. It is also easy to talk about places where you are an exception. However it is very hard to see the places where you are doing the same as everyone else and foolishly falling behind on something to your long term detriment. (also there are some people who talk about being an exception who are spending too much effort on things that don’t need to be done)
The USA has been doing it continuously for a long time
we stopped with our grain and the wikipedia does not mention after reagan which it was late in his term and the nineties when we stopped most things. If you read to the end it mentions purchasing and giving to food banks to stabalize prices which would sorta suggest we do not have storage of it anymore but can’t be sure. As far as I know we only kept doing it for oil and gas.
