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Norway to spend $6 million a year stock-piling grain, citing pandemic, war and climate change – will start storing 15,000 tons of grain yearly until 2028 or 2029
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- Published
- Aug 25 2023
- Word count
- 367 words
How long does grain typically last? If they store grain now, will it still be nutritious in 2028, or do they need to keep restocking it?
A lot of the sources I found were from preppers talking about how to store it at home for years (probably not the best sources) but I did find this page from Utah State University -- while it's also focused on individuals storing their own emergency supply rather than the more industrialized storage that a nationastate would doubtless use, it cites its research and seems to come from a dcoentific perspective. They give 5 years as a good rule of thumb "expiration date" for wheat stored in the way they recommend, but note that wheat much older (like 32 years old) was found to make acceptable bread to most consumers. The biggest risk in terms of storage seems to be insects.
Yeah, grain stores pretty well long term. Is it great? No, but these are emergency situations so a disappointing taste is hardly a major concern. They should rotate it out every 5 years though to maintain freshness and help offset of cost. The nice thing about grain is you only need water, grain, and salt to create a sustaining meal that can be your only food source for a long time before malnutrition starts happening.
I don’t like to store my grain (largish farming operation) for longer than 1 - 1.5 years. With a dryer and cooling system on all bins. That’s about the limit. If you bag it, put it in perfect climate control and monitor constantly theoretically you could get 5-10 years but it gets really risky for bugs or sprout or mold. Wheat is the easiest grain to store long term, corn next.
Also 15,000 tons is not that much on a country level scale. That’s only about 600,000 bushels of corn.
They have free large scale refrigeration. I expect if kept cold enough it will last for decades. People routinely eat multi-decade old MREs on YouTube and don’t seem to think they’re so far degraded they aren’t nutritious anymore.
Yes. Like the MREs themselves, take it with a heaping tablespoon of salt. But I generally think a moderate precision low accuracy data source can be better than nothing. There are definitely scientific studies to pull up if we want accuracy.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-017-0022-z - B vitamins are volatile and won’t last long.
https://extension.usu.edu/preserve-the-harvest/dev/storing-dry-beans-1 - (beans not grains) Macro nutrient content shouldn’t change.
The could probably eat the oldest as it comes.
And then, in the Olde ancient tale of Joseph, of technicolor dream coat fame from 3600 years ago, they managed to save grain without refrigeration and electricity for the 7 year good harvest to last them the entire 7 year famine.
With power and refrigeration and bug prevention they should be able to store it for suuuuuuuuuper long. And even if the nutrition kinda goes, it can be used to raise chickens and the meat protein will be fresh.
But how long is Norway going to store theirs?
So freshness isn't a big deal . The article also mentioned their global seed fault. Seems like a very forward thinking government.
Yup a rotating three month supply sounds about right. Singapore has been doing the same with rice and some other commodities.
Yeah I figure that regardless of whether the story of Joseph literally happened, the fact that storing the grain for that long isn't framed as weird or miraculous and hasn't been questioned (that I know of) since means that it's not an unrealistic amount of time to store grain.
Source: Palmetto Industries
Neat. I wouldn't have expected more than 3-4 years at most, it's pretty impressive to find out they hold for more than a decade.