Buying Groceries?

[1voyager1]

We have and use a freezer, and have a large quantity of shelving in our home.
We normally only go to COSTCO once or twice a year, with our shopping purchases going over $1k every time.
We usually end up with 2 overloaded carts when we get to the check stands.
Savings are the reason for our shopping pattern.

We normally only make a few scattered purchases for things like milk, eggs, produce, and other perishables.
We do buy bread locally, but 4 to 10 loaves at a time when on sale, then freeze them.

We do not by groceries often except odds and ends.

We do not presently have any serious food supply needs.
But, I do begin to worry about what effect the shopping hoarders will have on our normal shopping patterns.
We can easily get by with minimal shopping for another month or so.

I do believe that in awhile the supply should catch up with the present rush by the idiots, and hopefully exceed it.
There will probably be a great slow down of imports and exports, but domestic shipments [AK & HI] should do OK, I think.

Any with knowledge other than blind guesses on this?

[Rob Tucker]

It is my observation that the supply is now or has largely caught up here. Less and less empty shelves.

[1voyager1]

Then, shopping should return to normal patterns soon?
Shelf quantities should normalize, access lines should disappear, TP hoarders will leave their piles to their heirs, and so on?

[kander]

when people run out of room to stack the truckloads of toilet paper and noodles or run out of money. things will stabilize.

[Guest]

My take on our supply chain...

Local supply tanked with rush buying. Shelves emptied. Now the boats keep coming and for the most part the shelves should be filling up, within a week or two. A lot of new ships in Honolulu harbor this week. Stuff needs to be distributed to outer islands.

Stores will be restocked, but maybe it'll take a bit for things to even out because people's buying habits changed. Who would have thought all those dried beans would have disappeared, ie that isn't just a bit of a surge in their consumption, so maybe the orders being received right now aren't going catch up as much. But it should, as Rob said, catch up in short order.

We may even be overstocked for a while, if we consider that the orders coming in now were expected to serve our transient visitors as well. Has the price of ahi fallen here yet like on Oahu, where yesterday it was $4.00 a pound?

The real humbug is there was a serious break in stuff shipped out of China. Where is that break in our supply chain now? Maybe on the west coast? So some things will be absent for a spell. Though China is back online, so whatever break we might experience will be followed by a resumption in shipments, for the most part.

BTW, Young Brothers has announce the suspension of vehicle shipments and other nonessentials inter-island so as to focus entire on our immediate needs.

And still, there is a bigger problem on the horizon. Countries hoarding. We had our moment of consumer hoarding, and now hear of bidding wars for ventilators, between states and the feds even, so I have to wonder is that sort of lack of a unified effort, every man for themselves, going to effect other things, food?

But on an even bigger, further out in time, level consider this...

From: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/countries...00095.html

Countries Starting to Hoard Food, Threatening Global Trade

It’s not just grocery shoppers who are hoarding pantry staples. Some governments are moving to secure domestic food supplies during the conoravirus pandemic.

Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest shippers of wheat flour, banned exports of that product along with others, including carrots, sugar and potatoes. Vietnam temporarily suspended new rice export contracts. Serbia has stopped the flow of its sunflower oil and other goods, while Russia is leaving the door open to shipment bans and said it’s assessing the situation weekly.

To be perfectly clear, there have been just a handful of moves and no sure signs that much more is on the horizon. Still, what’s been happening has raised a question: Is this the start of a wave of food nationalism that will further disrupt supply chains and trade flows?

So how is this going to shake down? There's a lot of variables there and no steady leadership at our federal level, so yeah looking out a ways things may take a while before we can depend on anything to be constant.

[Rob Tucker]

It is spring. Time to plant your garden.

[terracore]

Good advice Rob. In another thread I posted how my brother in law works at a Lowes on the madland and people have been panic buying gardening supplies and soil mixes. I noticed some of the seed sections in the local stores are looking bare, sadly a lot of seeds that don't grow well here anyway were sold out.

Rozzet's nursery in HPP posted (FB I think) that they were doing extra plant starts this year. If you're new to gardening it's not a bad idea to get starts from people who have already figured out what does well here and got the seeds past the stage where the rats and birds destroy them.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

It is spring. Time to plant your garden.

Yes.
Check the Puna Gardening & Farming section on Punaweb. spencerw writes occasional suggestions for vegetables, herbs, and fruit that grow well in our climate. Always informative, with garden favorites as well as some unusual varieties.
Photos too....

(added) ...when you click on his links.

[kalianna]

But if you haven't planted veggies in Puna before, prepare to get your heart broken. Forget parsley in summer, most corn, most large tomatoes, and if anyone's ever grown zuchini around here without a greenhouse I'd love to hear about it. Peppers do well, as do cherry tomatoes, beans, greens when it's not too hot and eggplant.

[EightFingers]

Went to Safeway this morning, they were regulating the customers pretty strictly. One out, one in. I found everything I wanted.
Cashier would not bag groceries in the reusable bags, which I understood. I usually help bagging anyway, just to speed things along. The store was not very full for a Friday morning.

Puna: Our roosters crow first