Food shortage fears spur LDS members to stock up

Come what may, Donna and Aaron Bradshaw expect their spacious food pantry and emergency plan will carry them through.

Lawn Griffiths on Spiritual Life

Shelves and shelves of home-canned vegetables and meats, dried grains, an electric generator and stored water promises reasonable sustainability for the Mormon family in Gilbert in a world where food riots, starvation and disaster-related food shortages are becoming a kind of norm. There are threats of a United States trucking shutdown over high fuel costs that could lead to empty store shelves. Or there could be an unspeakable disaster in the Valley of the Sun, which has been largely immune from major disasters.

But the sharp spike in prices of staples such as bread, eggs, flour and milk at supermarkets has folks looking for options in food purchases and storage.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has historically impressed on members to build at least a three-month storehouse of food, store ample water and set aside money for a crisis.

“We have had some relatively new instructions from Salt Lake (City),” the church headquarters, Aaron Bradshaw said. “It used to be we saved a year’s supply in an emergency kind of fashion where you would have a bunch of wheat, beans and rice, and maybe you knew how to use it.” But because no emergencies came along, people got lax, he said.

But now with so many forces fighting for the global food supplies, church members are being asked to take food storage more seriously, he said.

“The first stage is to have a three-month supply of stuff you are really going to eat,” said Bradshaw, a counselor in the Gilbert-Higley Stake. “Some of us are more comfortable with a year’s supply, rotating things in and out. We have always saved stuff we are going to eat.”

A clear plan of rotating foods stored, eaten and replaced is vital to the longevity of family food supplies. The church lays out detailed storage instructions (www.providentliving.org) and presents new Brigham Young University scientific research that “properly packaged, low-moisture foods, stored at room temperature or cooler (75 degrees or lower), remain nutritious and edible much longer than previously thought.”

Estimated shelf life has been raised to “30-plus” years for wheat and white rice, and to 30 years for pinto beans, apple slices, macaroni, rolled oats and potato flakes.

Powdered milk is now 20 years.

“While there is a decline in nutritional quality and taste over time, depending on the original quality of food and how it was processed, packaged and stored, the studies show that even after being stored long-term, the food will help sustain life in an emergency,” the church says.

“We are kind of specialists,” said Bradshaw, noting that he and Donna came from families that had big gardens. “We raised pigs and chickens all the time we were growing up. So we are comfortable with canning and picking your own stuff.”

Bradshaw laments that his above-ground garden failed this year because he used “hot manure” that wiped out his seedlings. (Hot manure is livestock waste not aged or composted long enough, so that it is still releasing organic chemicals that can overpower young plants.)

“I eat well and deliciously,” he said. Only one of their five children is still home, and on Sundays, their offspring and 10 grandchildren are on hand to share in the bounty.

“They have all got their gardens in the backyard, and some of them are doing better than us because they have a little more time to fiddle with it,” he said. “And they don’t buy hot manure.

“Most people don’t have the canning skills anymore,” he added. “They are the young marrieds, and those skills have disappeared. Some can’t even cook, so those of us in leadership positions fret about that because if there were trouble, they would not be able to contribute anything to the community table.”

Don Evans, the church’s Arizona spokesman, said church members “hopefully are being smart and stocking up.”

Meanwhile, the national church, through its Provident Living Web site, has introduced a host of basic home storage starter kits. For $25.95, for example, families can get basic storage and financial savings instructions, plus No. 10 cans of white rice, pinto beans, rolled oats and winter wheat.

The church’s highest authorities caution, “... Do not go to extremes; it is not prudent, for example, to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. With careful planning, you can, over time, establish a home storage supply and a financial reserve.”

Mike Cooley is a stake president responsible for the bishop’s storehouse in west Mesa where church families can purchase foods and the members in economic need can get food assistance. The center includes a cannery that packs vegetables, grains and other foods dry and in water to prolong their storage life.

“What we are canning here is being shipped to various other places, like Salt Lake, California and Idaho,” and other church canneries produce what they have in supply and truck it to other areas. “So we are having a mixed bag of commodities that can be used by need families,” much of it under the label of Deseret Foods, he said.

Cooley said that in a major emergency, the Mormon church’s 138 storehouses and 24 processing facilities are not equipped to feed the church’s 13 million members worldwide. “If there was complete chaos and a falling out of grocery stores, there would be few supplies here,” he said. “That is why the church has asked that each home do the best they can to meet those needs, instead of relying on the church as a whole.”

The Bradshaws’ 8-by-10-foot pantry is a veritable food warehouse, and their freezer is full.

At least 1,000 pounds of wheat are on hand, some canned, some in buckets. “It just depends on when we got it and when we intend to use it,” Aaron Bradshaw said. Then there are the rice and white and black beans. “My wife is pretty up to speed, and she cans a lot,” he said. “She teaches canning classes. She cans chicken and beef in jars that we can live on, and I can have a chimichanga that’s better than Someburros’ in about eight minutes.”

“We can buy chickens and beef whenever there is a good sale and can up to 20 pints of it, and then we can eat for six months, until we do it again,” he said.

The Bradshaws keep a tank filled with 125 gallons of water, and periodically drain and refill it.

Preparedness is a constant matter of discussion by the church, Bradshaw said. “We talk about trucker strikes. If they go nuts on this trucker thing and quit bringing us food, then what do we do? If you don’t have vehicle gas, you hunker down at home and eat on your year’s supply until they resolve the strike. You don’t run into the hills.”

With his stake dissected by railroad tracks, an ammonia spill could become a disaster, he said. “There are some long-shot disasters, and you can’t foresee everything. You just have to work with the best ideas you’ve got.”

With a propane tank, an electric generator and other emergency equipment, Bradshaw said he could keep his freezer going, use his microwave three times a day and hold out until trouble passed.