Rationing in a Digital Age

With little warning, and so many people ignoring and dismissing tales of the coming Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, one area that was tested, and continues to feel the impact, is our food security.

Supermarket shelves lay half bare and store management is limiting quantities for purchase of some items. Another word for this, despite government’s reluctance to use it, is rationing.

It is difficult to treat food security as a priority when, living in a relatively wealthy nation, I am afforded the luxury of throwing food away, shunning leftovers, and being able to choose when I eat. Others, in fact most of the world’s human inhabitants, do not share in the bounty I feel privileged to consume.

With the Covid-19 pandemic bringing the world’s economies to their respective knees, rationing of key staples in food, fuel, and other commodities, as experienced during the world war years, will become a certainty. It will be followed by mass unemployment, homelessness, and civil unrest. It will happen sporadically in Canada and United States, perhaps even much of the European Union. New laws designed to limit your freedoms will be enacted in secret and without parliamentary debate. Poor people will be made into criminals by the state.

The trickle will begin in the poorer countries of the world who are unable to withstand the punishing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. What happens there is a template for repetition in neighboring countries, with a ripple-like tide washing over the planet.

We have seen major architypes throughout history where monarchs, governments, and corporations have been toppled. When people are unable to feed their families, they tend to get a tad antsy. Not the kind of people you need working against you. Passion is a great motivator. So is hunger. And fear.

In today’s world of instant gratification, no amount of coding, no amount of texting, and no amount of consumerism will ensure we have available, and can afford, a loaf of bread for feeding one’s family.

Plant a garden, even ever so small.