There always seems to be a panic buy before, during and after a disaster. I noticed people don't seem to settled yet over this covid deal, things like rice, beans and powdered milk seem to still be doing good sales with the shelves having a bare minimum on them when I shop. I notice stuff like that because I buy beans regularly during normal times and they are sale a lot times because it never appeared to be one of people's favorites.

Fun fact....did you know that beans and rice will store for up to twenty five years or longer? There was half a garbage bags full of beans, rice and peas sitting next door in my empty apartment unopened. I thought maybe I'll go see how long they last and stock pile them. I looked it up I was quite surprise. The biggest factor is keeping moisture out of them, they also recommend you freeze them first to make sure you kill any potential bug larvae laid inside any beans....but I'd think manufacturers probably do that before bagging them. Be nothing more gross than picking up a bag of beans in the store and see bugs in the bag. They recommend buying these moisture packs you stick in jars and then seal the jars tight. I never did get around to it. This guy came buy to pick up some metal from me the other day and I asked him if he wanted some can goods, bagged rice, beans and peas....his body seen the food in that bag and the boxes and his face lit up like crazy. Then I felt pretty good about giving them away knowing it really made someone's day, obviously someone who needed food.

I wouldn't worry to much, well you are in TX with quite a large population in some areas. Outside of the Detroit area the mid to northern area's of MI aren't that heavily populated like that. The government, from all appearances of what happened during covid, didn't actually have to drawn down on the national stockpile of food for quite some time. Farmers and wholesalers held the fort pretty good considering the stampede for food items moved from the west and east coast inwards. Being on Hive and listening to reports I seen this coming way in advance. I begged, literally, my kids to stockpile before it was to late, it took a lot of convincing, they thought I was crazy. They were nicely tucked in before the panic started...then finally they were thankful they had a busy body blogger mother. It wasn't until March I started seeing things coming out of the national stockpile, that's pretty good given the hundreds of millions of people in the US. I am not sure one growing season was enough to replenish all of that but it probably took priority. For the most part, outside of long term tangible items people still seem to want to continue on stockpiling our stores are stocked pretty good now.