My Brother in Law works as a driver for Frito-Lay. His job is to go around and keep the stores on his route stocked up with chips and etc.

I asked him if he ahd seen any evidence of Y2K related issues in his job. He said that several of the stores on his route had such troubles.

Aha! So here we have it, thinks I, an actual report of trouble in the food supply chain. I asked him what the nature of the trouble was and he said it was mainly in the accounts payable and receivable area - bookkeeping. He also told me that it was Frito's policy to continue deliveries and just keep track of sales - in other words that the Y2K problems of vendors and clients were not to disrupt the business - it can be sorted out later.

As he put it "Y2K or not, my truck still starts and I'm still delivering chips and dip."

This is just one data point, but it goes to show that at least some companies don't intend to let computer failures interfere with getting product to market.

JZ

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 09, 1999

Answers

Hey man, thats great! Cause I love sour cream and onion chips!

But I have a few ?'s before I get all excited.

1. Doesen't your bubba-in-law get a commission on the chips he sells?

2. How Long will Frito Lay go on "fronting" him this commission without verifing the sale or being paid themselves. Frito Lay is a big co. this could be nation wide.

3. How about the potato chip factory, are the ready? Are all the embedded chips going to work? Is the software going to keep things going?

4. Are the grocery stores he delivers to going to have a steady supply of electricity so they can be open when he comes to deliver? How about the Potato chip factory?

5. How long will his truck start after it runs out of gas and there isn't anymore or its rationed on a priority bases? Are potato chip guys a top priority when it comes to gas?

6. How about the potato farmers in Idaho? Are their tractors going to start? Are they going to have fuel? Are they going to be able to plant,cultivate, harvest and deliver taters to the chip factory?

I'm not going off but these are a few ?'s I must have answered before I stop "hoarding" sour cream and onion chips.

-- I love chips (noway@cause the.gov), September 09, 1999.

Oh by all means hoard away! Knock yourself out!

The point is just that minor glitches don't seem to be disrupting the food chain. They're working around these problems.

Major problems such as you outline have yet to appear. So, by all means, I think my Bubba-in-Law would encourage you to buy all the chips you can afford in time for the Rose Parade.

JZ

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 09, 1999.

We don't need the chip, we need the potato. We don't need the steak, we need the grain it was fattened on. We don't need the ham, we need the corn it ate. We don't need the pizza, we need the tomato and the cheese.

Forget the processing, learn to cook.

Close the factory, leave off the lights, the heat, save the fuel, save the cooking oil, save the truck fuel. A gallon of diesel that helps move processed food is a gallon wasted. We need those gallons to move beans and grains to markets.

Here's what I said in the Washington DC Survey: "Food is still key. We still have time to plant Victory Gardens, gain skills in raising our own food, stockpile to pipe food from warehouses to pantries. If I could, I'd order most meat animals slaughtered, eat them this year, convert corresponding land and feed to crops that humans consume directly. I still predict worldwide deaths in the hundreds of millions (from hunger, and cold-exposure while ill nourished), not including war casualties."

Frito-Lay doesn't "intend" to let computer failures interfere? Gimme a break.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 09, 1999.

Wait a second, "minor glitches don't seem to be disrupting"? What glitches? This is a PLAN for possible disruptions, not a current response to a current disruption. It's hardly a plan, more a pep talk.

Jeez, Jeff, you got real low reassurance requirements.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 09, 1999.

Hey Jeff it seems to me that accounting software is always the first to be remediated so what you are really saying is that Frito Lay is just now realizing they have a year 2000 problem in their bookkeeping (accounting) and their stratagy is it (accounting) will all get sorted out in the wash? They haven't even begun to see the impact that y2k is going to have on their systems?

A minor glitch to you is somebody else's major problem.

Interconnectedness. Get it?

-- I love chips (noway@cause the.gov), September 09, 1999.

No, he's pointing to some retailer and saying THAT guy's problem is Frito-Lay's "glitch". Sheesh, that's trivia.

Of the points you listed, 2, 3, 4 are glitches. Now 5, that's the start of a problem, but let's assume that there will be some shippers somewhere who'll take food to stores, just because it's food, even if it's in the form of potato chips. But when you hit number 6, hoo boy, NOW you got a problem.

But the retailer not paying the delivery guy on time? No way that's a glitch.

I bet there's ALWAYS some store that can't pay, right Jeff? Next year his brother in law is going to be wishing real hard that his biggest problem is just getting paid by retailers. This is not a data point, it's a happy face drawn in potato chips.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 09, 1999.

Puget Sound writes: "We don't need the chip, we need the potato... Forget the processing, learn to cook."

Oh, I know how to cook, believe me. I'm not a big customer of brudder-in-law's products. It's just a data point, fer crying out loud. Y2K-related troubles are as likely to come in the form of screwed-up billing as stores unable to sell product or trucks unable to deliver it. Perhaps more so.

"Here's what I said in the Washington DC Survey...If I could, I'd order most meat animals slaughtered, eat them this year, convert corresponding land and feed to crops that humans consume directly."

Geez, and some people worry about authoritarianism from the current government!

Believe it or not, I'm a small farmer. I raise, kill, and store all my family's meat and a good bit of other food besides. And I'm rather pleased that you are in no position to order anything at all done with my livestock. I'll make those decisions, thanks. "I still predict worldwide deaths in the hundreds of millions (from hunger, and cold-exposure while ill nourished), not including war casualties."

Can I come up to the Sound and collect a beer this time next year if your prediction doesn't come to pass? If it does, we'll probably both be dead, and you'll have to collect a beer from me in the hereafter.

"Frito-Lay doesn't "intend" to let computer failures interfere? Gimme a break. Wait a second, "minor glitches don't seem to be disrupting"? What glitches? This is a PLAN for possible disruptions, not a current response to a current disruption. It's hardly a plan, more a pep talk. "

Not at all - the disruptions are taking place right now, according to brudder-in-law. They write the invoices out by hand and submit those instead of the usual ones. They get paid.

The point is, Frito-Lay, at least at this point, seems to find the disruptions not terribly severe, and only in the billing cycle, rather than the production or delivery cycle, and has enough faith in the system to work around and service the few stores with glitchy systems.

Now, Frito-Lay may not be the best example (I'd love to talk to a Foster Farms rep, or some other product with a shorter shelf life and more complex production and distribution system) but it's the one I happened upon.

"Jeez, Jeff, you got real low reassurance requirements."

Well, to date I've not found any reason not to be reassured. I'm not overly worried about embedded chips et al.

For the record, I'll restate my overall position. I would love a few weeks or a couple month's vacation early next year - get caught up around the farm and work through the backlog of firewood (my woodlot produces more than we usually use, and I have to give the stuff away) and generally have a nice low-key winter.

I have no expectation of such a stroke of good fortune, however.

Nor do I have any reason to wish for hardship on others. As I read this forum, I get the distinct sense that there's more than a little "neener neener neener, you're gonna starve along with everyone else who made fun of me, starting with that bully Billy Thompson in the second grade!" in the discussions.

So, I don't really give a rip about who prepares and who doesn't. I "prepared" years ago by making a lifestyle change for my own improved quality of life. I still work the day job in the computer industry (and my company, btw, has been doing quite nicely since our stuff runs on UNIX boxes and has no 2000 problems).

So, there you go. Am I a polly? I'm certainly not a doomer... I think I belong in a third class of folks - the "self-reliant rurals who don't much care" - I read this forum to keep a finger on things, but I haven't seen anything to make me change that stance.

Have a Nice Day,

JZ

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 09, 1999.

Jeff I'm glad you have long since prepared-but

1. What are you going to do when bubba-in-law loses his job and comes to your farm to let him in?

2. How about the rest of the in-laws?

3. How about their in-laws?

4. How about the out-laws?

and all everyone wants is

-- some tater chips (no way@cause the.gov), September 09, 1999.

Thanks for sharing the data point Jeff.

Yes, as long as the fossil juice and the AC-DC current stays on, we can muddle through, as you indicate with manual workarounds. Its when disruptions or delays in the basic critical infrastructure, occur, that it may get dicey. Or is that... dippy?

Embedded chips ahoy! Now theres a unknown brand... that may get delivered early next year.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 09, 1999.

"Embedded chips ahoy! Now theres a unknown brand... that may get delivered early next year."

Diane-- now there's a chip of the ole block

-- I just wish she were sour cream and onion (no way@cause the. gov), September 09, 1999.

>Jeff I'm glad you have long since prepared-but >1. What are you going to do when bubba-in-law loses his job and comes to your farm to let him in? >2. How about the rest of the in-laws? >3. How about their in-laws? >4. How about the out-laws? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'd shoot my own wife if she tried to mooch a fry off my tray at McDonalds! (Is that a sufficiently macho response?)

But really, I haven't *prepared* so much as that my life is structured so that this stuff is just around as a matter of course. The generator, well, canned food, frozen food, smoked food, goats having babies in January and producing milk to feed us and the pigs, is just kinda how it is. What it means is that any potential weirdness from Solar Flare to computer disruption to war is just a change in habits.

But to your questions....

Lessee - I'd rather starve than know that Mike and Julie & family (the brother-in-law in question and my sister) starved, so they're in.

His in-laws are all in Arizona. No chance they'll show up. The rest are all over the place, nowhere near here (unless Andrew takes it in his head to swim from Kauai.)

As to outlaws, well, I live way down the end of a dead-end road - the neighborhood is quite defensible if it comes to that. But it won't.

I've never shot and killed a human before, but given the necessity, I don't imagine I'd have a problem with it. (Except that the wife will be grossed out when I feed their naked carcasses to the pigs.) Waste not, want not, I always say.

No one ever mentions how pigs are the perfect post-civilization animal - they can grow fat on anything from clover to your unwanted guests and their feed conversion rate is 3:1, as opposed to 10:1 for sheep, goats, or cattle. They smell and they're bad tempered, but hey, so are we. They can survive year-round with minimal shelter in most of the continental US. And I've never had one die on me before I arranged a little "accident" for him or her.

Sigh - it would be nice to spend my time raising pigs, milking goats, tending garden, pumping & carrying water, and splitting firewood. I'm not too optimistic, though. Come Jan. 3, I'll be here at work, documenting telephone systems just like today.

Still a polly, maybe that's a nom de keyboard for me - Redneck Polly. I kind of like it...

JZ

p.s.

Free clue to preppers - go to your local farm supply and you can get all the 50 pound sacks of food you want at about $5-$10 per sack, depending on what you want to eat. Personally, I'd tend toward rolled or whole oats and corn (though cracked corn would be OK, too) and molasses COB. Molasses COB is Corn, Oats, and Barley, all rolled in Molasses. A lot like granola and you can eat it right out of the bag. I've been known to have a handful while milking. Avoid chicken feed - it has grit in it.

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 09, 1999.

Jeff,

Thanks for filling in some of the blanks. We see small fragments of people, here, and have to respond to the parts we see. You bet I'll buy you a beer next year, if things go well.

Your attitude sounds exactly like what my wife and I have been encouraging for a couple years. I'm glad that you are ready for this, while most are not. Unfortunately, your thread started by giving those unprepared people an unwarranted reason to relax, when they should instead be getting ready for disruptions. Y2k is hard to get a grip on, and most will eagerly embrace a reason to dismiss it. For some, your opening comments were that reason. As someone who's invested lots of time and money trying to alert people to the danger, this is real frustrating to read.

I can't order that meat animals be slaughtered, and I'm not sure any person SHOULD have that much authority. Our track record as humans is not real good in that department. But IF it could be done, I think it would be a great move, and IF the authority were given to me to give that order, I'd give it. Our goal should not be to put meat on the table, but to put FOOD on the table, and meat is a very inefficient way to deliver food value to people. I expect people to starve next year, and some of them will starve because of the balance we choose today between meat and other foods. Perhaps someone will starve who might have lived, if your farm had produced less meat and more of other things. Perhaps your farming choices will not have that effect, you being out in the sticks, but some farms closer to big cities will.

The bit about "this is a plan, not a current response" was sloppily worded. Sorry, I was getting lathered up.

"More than a little neener neener". Boy, you got that right. There's one out there who calls himself "DominantSniper", for instance. This guy lives in some kind of imaginary playspace, splashing on testosterone aftershave, I think. We have to put up with that, on this forum, along with some pretty smart people. Personally, I want everyone to get through this without much damage. I have goals that have nothing to do with programming or Y2k or TEOTWAWKI.

As for being reassured, well, your day job may not be giving you a wide enough appreciation of the problem. As a 25+ year mainframe programmer, I can tell you we are in deep doo doo. My company is done, wrapped up all the projects, we did a self-congratulatory dinner and Y2k team members are going on to other tasks. But this company is not typical, from what I hear, and the risks are enormous.

When we write this up in the history books, a couple decades from now, I think we will point to the food supply as key to those areas that survived and those that did not. The small communities, with independent farmers, far enough from big towns, will do well, I think. And people who live through it will be like people who survived the great depression, who never again in their lives will be without a couple months' food in their pantries.

Good luck - hope to buy you a beer sometime.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 10, 1999.

>Thanks for filling in some of the blanks. We see small fragments of people, here, and have to respond to the parts we see. You bet I'll buy you a beer next year, if things go well.

E-mail me your e-mail address and I'll give you a shout next time I'm up there (well after the first, of course.)

>Your attitude sounds exactly like what my wife and I have been encouraging for a couple years. I'm glad that you are ready for this, while most are not.

The reason to do it is to improve your life. Not to prep for emergencies - prepping for emergencies is almost by definition not a way of life. When a big storm is coming, I batten down the hatches - I don't keep them battened down in July.

>Unfortunately, your thread started by giving those unprepared people an unwarranted reason to relax, when they should instead be getting ready for disruptions. Y2k is hard to get a grip on, and most will eagerly embrace a reason to dismiss it. For some, your opening comments were that reason. As someone who's invested lots of time and money trying to alert people to the danger, this is real frustrating to read.

Well, if someone makes his or decision based on my Brother in Law's instructions from Frito-Lay, they probably are beyond your reach in the first place.

>Our goal should not be to put meat on the table, but to put FOOD on the table, and meat is a very inefficient way to deliver food value to people.

Indeed - overall. But the underlying assumption is that the corn/oats/etc used to raise meat for the wealthy (and I mean that in a world-wide sense) would be available to people if they were not fed to meat animals. This is erroneous in our current economic structure (and appears to be just as erroneous in putatively "communist" nations where such redirections are an overt part of their economy.)

>I expect people to starve next year, and some of them will starve because of the balance we choose today between meat and other foods. Perhaps someone will starve who might have lived, if your farm had produced less meat and more of other things. Perhaps your farming choices will not have that effect, you being out in the sticks, but some farms closer to big cities will.

We're pretty close to Portland. What I do is raise meat for our table and for yuppies, to be perfectly honest- free range, custom cut, yadda yadda yadda.

My farm is not suited to the growing of large-scale agricultural crops such as grains, legumes, or vegetables. It's 1/2 woodlot and the part that is pasture is on at least a 15 degree incline. Perfect for sheep, goats, and hogs, which is what I raise. We have enough flat space for an orchard and garden, but not enough to raise annual crops.

>Personally, I want everyone to get through this without much damage. I have goals that have nothing to do with programming or Y2k or TEOTWAWKI.

Me, too. While a vacation would be nice, it would probably suck by the end of February.

>As for being reassured, well, your day job may not be giving you a wide enough appreciation of the problem. As a 25+ year mainframe programmer, I can tell you we are in deep doo doo.

What I've been able to really tell in a little digging is that the problems can be in chain-of-payment systems. We hear a lot of talk about the security system that locked all the doors and the paycheck clearing and such. But in a *real* pinch, doors can be opened, locks can be cut, and stuff can be made to work - If automation does fail in a widespread way, it might end up being an employment boon, as human labor makes a temporary comeback.

Shortages as I see them will likely take the "Soviet Union" form, where Safeway has lots of bread, but no meat, and Fred Meyer has plenty of milk, but no eggs. And everyone has Fritos. ;^)

>The small communities, with independent farmers, far enough from big towns, will do well, I think. And people who live through it will be like people who survived the great depression, who never again in their lives will be without a couple months' food in their pantries.

That model - of small farmers working in smallish communities, is one I've been thinking on for a long time. I have up to a two-year waiting list for my pigs - because I don't grow many because that would cease to be fun. But when people have had it, they want more.

Well, if more folks raised pigs on small acreage like I do (my place is only 5 acres) and people got it together to buy a $150 chest freezer at sears, everyone could buy their meat from guys like me and get much better meat, humanely raised, using more "unsuitable" land and less processed feed, and contribute to a sustainable economy that does not feed the huge agri-business monster so much. Plus, if the feces ever hits the rotating blades, the system is more fault-tolerant.

>Good luck - hope to buy you a beer sometime.

I hope to be able to collect it!

JZ

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 13, 1999.

I think you nailed it on the shortages, but they might arise from a couple different forces. First would be processing failures, such no one can produce any potato chips (because the industry-standard potato chip machine is noncompliant) so there simply will be none. Similar effects in other parts of the food industry. Plus store-centric errors, such as Safeway being unable to link to Ore-Ida's network, so no potatoes in Safeway, but Fred Meyer is ok. The Russian-style shortage.

Second, I suspect long-distance transport will be scarce and valuable. We won't waste it on merely diversifying a diet, and will instead use it to supply a basic diet. It's worth more to get beans to NY than to get oranges to someone who HAS beans. So here in the PNW we'll probably be eating lots of beans and potatoes, but no oranges. In Florida they'll have oranges and rice, and no beans. That could be done simply by hyper-taxing what fuels we have, and food-shipping would be priced out of the fuel market. A few, of course, will pay any price, just as in England during the war you might see an orange or two a year.

The corollary is that we'll be eating seasonally again. No more fresh out of season stuff from South America. We'll eat what's available until we're sick of it. Gorge on cherries and you'll see what I mean. Canning will be back in a BIG way. As Faithful Frank (don't ask) used to say, "we eat what we can, and what we can't, we can".

This all favors direct buying from the farmer, which is a much more robust model than the JIT pipeline we now use. We've recently started buying from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, and the difference is amazing. You can actually TASTE the tomato, for example. Saturday we canned 17 lbs of salmon from a nearby fishfarm. When we talk with CSA farmers, we encourage them to start expanding this year (if they GI) because they'll sell all they can grow, next year.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 13, 1999.

>So here in the PNW we'll probably be eating lots of beans and potatoes, but no oranges. In Florida they'll have oranges and rice, and no beans.

Now *that* could be a crisis. I don't care much for potatoes, but I'm a three-rice-meal-a-day kinda guy. It's a good thing we already buy it in not less than 20-pound sacks. Fortunately, rice is easily stored and shipped.

>The corollary is that we'll be eating seasonally again. No more fresh out of season stuff from South America. We'll eat what's available until we're sick of it. Gorge on cherries and you'll see what I mean.

Eating seasonally is cool by me. More fresh fish is also cool with me. Gorging on cherries, well...I like cherries and all that - but if things are bad, I won't be running the generator to power the well just to be flushing the john every 10 minutes, if you see what I mean.

>Canning will be back in a BIG way. As Faithful Frank (don't ask) used to say, "we eat what we can, and what we can't, we can".

I enjoy canning. I do the canning at our house. My granny would be proud.

>This all favors direct buying from the farmer, which is a much more robust model than the JIT pipeline we now use. We've recently started buying from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, and the difference is amazing. You can actually TASTE the tomato, for example. Saturday we canned 17 lbs of salmon from a nearby fishfarm. When we talk with CSA farmers, we encourage them to start expanding this year (if they GI) because they'll sell all they can grow, next year.

Oh yeah - I can't order pork products in restaurants any more. I just can't deal with what passes for bacon, for example. And the thing is, if people get into the habit, they tend to prefer it to store-bought, anyway.

JZ

-- Jeff Zurschmeide (zursch@cyberhighway.net), September 13, 1999.

Frito-Lay could manage this way (manual entry and updates) for five weeks - then they'd have to pay their own employees and suppliers or be unable to be in business the 6 and seventh week; or on a "trust and forget" basis for one payment cycle.

Most companies in food retail have a 2-4% profit margin - the money coming in from your brother-in-law's daily sales are what pays his wage. The company has to re-order and re-produce what is consumed, or it can't be re-supplied. The payments can't be delayed or "guessed", and neither can the receipts, for more than one cycle.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 13, 1999.

Robert:

Unless, of course, our fine government decides to try an emergency, very temporary, nationalization or martial law type solution.

Maybe run everything on a hobble basis until it starts to limp along better, then start it all from December 30th numbers.........

-- Jon Williamson (jwilliamson003@sprintmail.com), September 13, 1999.

Rice? You want RICE? Ok, people, listen up here and I'll do you all a favor.

Go see Ellis Stansel in Gueydan, Louisiana. (He died in 1994, but they still do things the same way.) They have got the best rice in the world, bar none. We visited Ellis in 1988, if I recall, and he fed us ice tea under the trees, while we listened to his obnoxious peacocks. It was a snap finding him - everyone in Gueydan (that's GAY-doh for you foreigners, where the "o" in "doh" is like the "o" in "cost") knows Ellis.

He told us they open the post office on Sunday just so he could ship, and rich capitalist pigs would fly their private planes down there so he could truck rice out to the airport. We loaded the trunk of our car with autographed bags (still got 'em, you bet) and got a tour of the 3-car garage that housed the entire system.

You want rice? Here's your rice. (BW in French is BRdB.)

-- bw (home@puget.sound), September 13, 1999.