The following is thanks to Bob Livingston:

We take it for granted that we can just walk into any grocery store and pick up a bunch of produce to make a meal.

That hasn’t always been possible lately for our cousins in Great Britain.

Fresh produce has been running out all across England. Regular folks like you and I are encountering totally empty produce shelves at large chain grocery stores like Tesco and Aldi. Experts are blaming the completely barren produce aisles on “Brexit red tape” and the current bogeyman “supply chain issues.”

Those are symptoms. The underlying truth is that food isn’t as abundant as we would like to think. Of course, it’s difficult to deliver large volumes of produce and keep it fresh. But that doesn’t mean it’s abundant. There’s no stockpile of anything. All it takes is one minor disruption anywhere along the long line of delivery from farm or factory to the local store and shelves will be empty.

I wrote to you about this a few days ago but I felt it prudent to mention this issue again for your benefit, and in case you missed my previous letter (or even if you read it!) in light of what is happening in Great Britain right now.

Because we need to be honest: The finite resources of the Earth are stretched so far that future wars fought by humankind will be over the same things the first wars were fought over — water, shelter and food.

Real Clear World put these numbers in context: “The 4 billion people presently surviving on the equivalent of $5 a day or less won’t be content to live at subsistence level for the rest of their lives. Lifting them up will take more — much more — of everything, as the average person living in the industrialized world today consumes or uses 40,000 pounds each year of metals, from aluminum to zinc, and more than 70 elements in between.”

I have spoken with agronomists who say that in order to support population increases, the world will have to quadruple its agriculture production and increase its energy output by a factor of eight. Will today’s inflation and “supply chain problems” lead to extreme food shortages as the population increases? There will inevitably be a shortage of food if any disaster occurs, for sure, so why not be prepared in any case?

This didn’t use to be an issue, as expert David Morris wrote, “The titles ‘survivalist’ and ‘prepper’ would have seemed redundant a couple of generations ago. When the Greatest Generation was growing up, preparedness was simply a way of life. Before the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other Federal aid programs were around, people knew that they had to be able to take care of themselves in the event of natural and manmade disasters.”

“At the core, that’s what survivalists and preppers are. They are people who are aware that life is full of uncertainty and who have decided to put things into place for when bad times happen.”

“With the Constitution and Bill of Rights, our Founding Fathers pushed responsibility from the Federal government down to the individual citizen and promoted a survivalist/prepper mentality. They did it with the 2nd and 4th Amendments, they did it by example (Washington leading a mostly barefoot army across the Delaware), and they did it throughout their writing.”

At the very least, start storing canned and packaged foods immediately. Once a foundation of at least a week’s worth of food is established, continue to build your stores until you have at least a month’s worth of canned and packaged goods that you and your loved ones actually like and will eat. After you have a month’s worth of food stored, start looking at long-term freeze-dried or dehydrated food-storage options to supplement your stash.

Having a week’s supply of water on hand is great, but you will need to be able to get more when you run out. You should know at least a couple of potential water sources nearby and have a plan to purify it, as I explain in last month’s The Bob Livingston Letter^®.

Morris adds that the “survival” mentality will also help our country in general as resources become more scarce:

“The more self-reliant you are, the less control the government can exert over your life. In addition to living a lifestyle that insulates them, survivalists and preppers are usually well-armed and seek advanced training … After a local, regional or national disaster, the number of refugees will be inversely proportional to the number of preppers and survivalists in the area. In other words, the more preppers you have in an area, the less strain the hospitals, volunteer organizations and government-run refugee centers will have.

“You’re not going to see very many refugees donating their food, supplies or time. It’s not that they don’t want to, but rather it’s because they are in a fight for their lives and may be dehydrated, hungry and tired.

“Preppers and survivalists who have food storage, water or water-treatment tools and who have prepared themselves psychologically for disasters will be able to help in several ways. First, they are less likely to become refugees or use the time and resources of first responders. Second, since they are prepared for disasters, they can help the people in their immediate area, which will lessen the load on first responders and reduce the number of refugees. Third, by helping themselves and their neighbors, preppers will increase the quality of care for people who do need first responder care or who need to relocate to a refugee center.

“In short, the more survivalists and preppers we have, the more stable our families, cities and the country as a whole are.”

The harsh reality is… you never know how bad things will get over the next 15 years and you never know how long the hard times will last. The only way to guarantee that we survive is to be prepared.

I encourage everyone who is able to acquire seeds and grow vegetables in a home garden, which I also detailed in a recent issue of The Bob Livingston Letter^®, which is immediately available when you subscribe. It’s a great way to prepare for an uncertain future, but also as part of a healthy lifestyle.

We have also set up a website so you can purchase food for storage at a discount because while our grocery shelves in America have seemingly been, up until recently, chock full of food — so the idea of a food shortage barely registers in our minds — delivery and staffing shortages have proven to us that any item, including food, can disappear from store shelves very rapidly and with no warning… or not appear at all!

Store shelves already empty out whenever there’s the threat of some event. Why wait until then… or worse, until they’re constantly empty? It is past time to prepare.