Rationing and Sharing

We've had a couple of experiences in the past few days that are related to shortages.

The first has to do with almond milk. First, Greg ran out of cow's milk, and started eating breakfast using my almond milk instead. All of a sudden we were going through almond milk twice as fast, and generating almond meal twice as fast, and our schedule got all disrupted.

I'd gotten into a routine where I would make enough almond milk to last Sophia and me for three days; I would make it twice during the week, and fix flapjacks or waffles on the weekend. Now all of a sudden we were running out in a day and a half, and I wouldn't notice that I needed to soak almonds again. We had several mornings where there was only enough milk for one or two people. This was particularly challenging on school days. Sophia's breakfast has to take priority, because she's on a deadline, and we don't have enough time to switch unexpectedly to fixing a cooked breakfast. And I found I was getting stressed out when I saw Greg reaching for the last of the milk, when I wasn't going to have time to eat myself until I got her out the door.

He found another carton of milk in his freezer, and switched back to that, but we're going to have to work out a new breakfast routine when he gets back from New Jersey (he left on Friday, and will be home later this week.) But in the meantime, I noticed that I'm almost out of flax seed, at *both* houses. I use about a tablespoon of flax seed in each batch of almond milk, and I realized over the weekend that there were only about three tablespoons left. I knew it was running low at my place, but I had thought there was another jar at Greg's, and it turns out there wasn't.

I had to decide whether to start rationing, and using less per batch, or whether to finish it off and then do without. During a food shortage, decisions like that hinge on predictions about what will happen next. I know that this particular shortage will end in less than two weeks, and I'll be able to restock. So I decided to drop my usage back to 1/2 tablespoon per batch, figuring that will come close to getting us through the month.

If I was expecting a long-term shortage (as might happen, for example, when a product is discontinued, or a crop fails and is unavailable for a year) then the question comes down to, "how hard is it to find an alternative?" You might want to just jump in and do it, or you might want to put it off as long as possible. In this case, the flax seed improves the consistency of the milk, which is a cosmetic issue that's easy enough to ignore. But it also changes the baking properties of the almond meal. Too much, and the bread stays pudding-like instead of developing a bread-like texture as it bakes. Too little, and it gets crumbly and falls apart. It may take time to adjust my recipes to compensate: it might change my usage of other ingredients, and I might need to find a different set of recipes that are less dependent on texture.

In a real disaster situation, many things would be changing at once, and we'd be all be maxed out on the amount of disruption we could handle. The ability to maintain a familiar routine around food -- or any one aspect of our lives -- could make the difference between feeling stressed out and getting overwhelmed and unable to cope. So we might not want to wing it and start experimenting right away.

I may need new recipes for almond meal anyway, since I'm generating so much more of it with Greg starting to use the milk too. On the other hand, I might plan for more mornings with hot cereal, which uses a lot less milk.

The other incident was about sweet potatoes. I'd been looking at our stash, thinking it was shrinking fast but we would have plenty to last through the end of the month. Then my roommate Rhonda reminded me that some of the sweet potatoes were hers, as a barter exchange for helping me clean them last fall. She pulled out an armful for her share, and I blanched when I saw how many she was taking. After some discussion, we realized (among other things) that I was feeling much more possessive of my sweet potatoes when I discovered we might run out of them before the end of the month.

That feeling is clearly not rational -- we have an abundance of other food, and the sweet potatoes run out every year around this time. On the other hand, hoarding is such a characteristic response to food shortages that it's no surprise to see that urge surfacing. This is another example of how disrupted routines -- in this case, changes in who is asking to share a food supply -- might exacerbate an already stressful situation. In communities with pre-existing tensions, shortages can even lead to violence, as people who need a resource clash with people who don't want to share.

Greg and I both live in intentional communities, but (so far as I know) neither has discussed how food and other resources might be shared in an emergency situation. In America, the default is private ownership, and most people feel morally justified in keeping our resources to ourselves, even when others around us are homeless or starving. But the boundaries around this are unclear. Some people would readily share with strangers, while others wouldn't share with their own extended family. Some people are willing to share when they believe others are needy through no fault of their own, but refuse when they perceive others as lazy or irresponsible.

How we respond to our own needs, and the needs of our neighbors and friends, could have a profound impact on our ability to pull together as a community in the face of a long emergency. So it's worth thinking through who we would include, and to what extent and why, if a real shortage were to occur.