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| Grain stocks per capita March 2020. Y axis is number of days at 4000 Calories per day. Blue line is corn (maize). Red line is corn plus wheat. Data from HERE. Note that the Y axis is logarithmic. |
I created this chart to satisfy my curiosity, how many days is each state in the United States away from anarchy should interstate commerce cease.
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| A closer look at the right end of the curve in tabular form. List started at Texas to include majority of highest population states. |
Grain is reported as being in two places. "On-farm" which is exactly what it sounds like and "Off-farm" which includes grain in mills, elevators, warehouses, terminals, processors, train cars, barges and so on.
States with deep-water ports might have a significant amount of grain out-bound and that grain would be difficult to access for domestic consumption.
Significant amounts of corn are in the pipeline for hobby-farmer animal feed in states like New York. The corn that a horse owner panic bought for his horses might or might not become available for human consumption. In many cases, it means that the owner decided to euthanize his horse (or chickens). Good luck with that.
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| Sorted for day's supply of wheat as reported by the USDA for March of 2020 |
Within state transport
If transportation between states pukes, then continued anarchy is likely to poison transportation within the state.
The fact that Illinois has 7 years of grain within its borders is meaningless to somebody living in Chicago if the resources that are more than 20 miles away might as well be on the moon.
Other big cities have the same issues.
Excellent chart - points to places preppers would be better off. Go where the food is and the people aren't.
ReplyDeleteA good snapshot but some things that seem off. Ok, Iowa had 0 wheat but bet they had 100 days or more worth of corn and soybeans. ( Just not a wheat producing state and no ports as such. ) Some states would have rice, sunflowers etc. Still, gives some good hints as to which states would be screwed. I find Texas to be a mixed bag. They grow about everything and have refineries . However, they also have a huge population, long distances between some parts of the state and the cities are often very Democrat leaning
ReplyDeleteComplexity increases quickly as you dig into the issue. I decided to stay with two commodities: Wheat because bread is the staff-of-life and Corn because it is the single biggest source of calories we grow although very little is consumed directly by humans; it CAN be. Oil producing crops would be next but they pretty much track corn and wheat acreage by state.
DeleteTexas is Texas. It could easily be four states: Houston/Dallas Ft Worth, Rural east, Rural north-middle and rural west.
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DeleteFunny you should mention 4 states. Not sure if you are aware but when Texas joined the US it had added that it can split into up to 4 states plus the remaining state of Texas. So, it CAN become up to 5 states total. As Houston and Austin become more and more liberal the Western portions have talked more seriously about splitting off. Some argue Texas gave up all rights ( to split) when they joined the Confederacy and then was later readmitted to the Union. At this moment the issue isnt going anywhere
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