In a recent video on our food supply, we
talked about how food pressure starts
upstream long before most people see it
at the grocery store. It starts in
places most households never look.
Fertilizer prices, diesel costs, drought
maps, cattle herds, hay supplies, global
weather, shipping lanes, labor
availability, and farmer decisions made
months before anything reaches your
cart. In this video, I'm going to take
you one step further and bring those
home to a more practical level. These
are the eight foods and food categories
in particular that I'm going to be
watching closely over the next year. And
I would advise you to as well. Not
because I think every grocery store
shelf will be empty and not because I
want you to panic buy any things that
your family's never going to eat. These
are the foods and food categories where
the cushion may be thin, the margins are
fragile, or a single disruption could
hit harder than it normally would. Get
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one step ahead of the events shaping our
future. Each week, I share the risk I'm
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use the link below. If you're new to
this channel, my name is Chris and on
this channel we discuss emergency
preparedness, aka prepping. We create
these videos to help you understand
what's happening before it reaches your
grocery cart. Food pressure usually
starts months earlier, driven by
weather, feed costs, fuel prices, labor
shortages, and farmers' decisions. And
if you can spot those trends early, you
have time to make gradual adjustments
before higher prices show up at the
checkout. Now, let me be clear. With all
the foods that we're going to discuss, I
don't see massive shortages and empty
store shelves. Now, that's always a
possibility, but I think there's more of
an issue of less room for error. Some of
these food areas have more cushion than
the headlines suggest, but others do not
and that difference, it does matter.
When there is cushion, a drought, flood,
wildfire, diesel spike, processing
disruption, labor shortage, cyber
attack, or heat wave can often be
absorbed with only limited price
movement. But when there is no cushion,
the same event can hit harder and move
quickly into prices, quality, or
availability. That is a thread running
through this list. Not everything
everywhere all at once, but specific
pressure points where thin supply,
fragile margins, or concentrated growing
regions can eventually show up in your
grocery budget and food supply. So,
these are not eight foods that I think
are guaranteed to disappear. These are
eight food categories where I think the
cushion is getting dangerously thin, the
margins are fragile, the costs are
likely to continue to increase, or the
growing regions are concentrated enough
that one hard shot can matter.
Beef. Number one on the list is beef,
and I'm not even factoring in the
screwworm making all the headlines
today. Beef is probably one of the
clearest categories on the list because
it has a slow rebuilding supply problem.
The US cattle herd is now the smallest
it has been in roughly 75 years. And
when the herd gets that tight, you don't
rebuild it in a few months. You rebuild
it over years. Fewer cows mean fewer
calves. Fewer calves mean fewer feeder
cattle. Fewer feeder cattle eventually
means fewer slaughter-ready animals. And
that process, it takes time, and it can
keep pressure on beef prices even when
other parts of the food system look more
comfortable. And this is also why beef
is different from something like corn.
If corn production is strong one year,
you can rebuild some supply quickly.
With cattle, the clock, it moves
differently. Ranchers have to decide
whether to hold back females, rebuild
herds, manage feed costs, and absorb
risk. If drought, high operating costs,
or strong current prices like the ones
that we're seeing now encourage
producers to keep selling rather than
rebuilding, the tight supply problem can
stretch out. The forecast here is
simple. Beef will stay expensive through
2026 and 2027 because the herd is too
small to rebuild quickly. The USDA
projects beef prices will climb 10.1% in
2026 with cattle prices reaching new
highs in 2027 as supplies remain
limited. What this means for your
household is that beef may stay
expensive even if prices wobble month to
month. Ground beef may be more available
than premium cuts because imports and
cow beef can cushion part of the market,
but if lean trim gets tight, even ground
beef can keep moving higher. The
practical move is not to run out and buy
random meat that you can't store or
afford. It is to watch sales, freeze
portions your family will actually use,
stretch ground beef with beans, lentils,
rice, pasta, oats, or vegetables, and
keep back up proteins like canned
chicken, tuna, salmon, beans, lentils,
and peanut butter. Dairy.
Number two is dairy. Dairy is connected
to beef, but it is not the same story.
With beef, the tight herd points more
directly to tight supply, and with
dairy, the signal is more complicated
because milk production can look strong
on the surface while the underlying
system is carrying more strain than
people realize. Dairy depends on hay,
alfalfa, silage, corn, soy meal,
pasture, and replacement heifers. If
forage gets expensive or feed costs stay
elevated, dairy margins get squeezed.
High diesel prices also add pressure by
raising the cost of harvesting and
hauling forage, transporting milk, and
moving feed. At the same time, dairies
have been using beef on dairy breeding
more often because beef cross calves can
bring better prices. Now, that can help
a dairy operation in the short term, but
it can also reduce the number of dairy
bred heifers available to replace older
cows later. And that's the part most
people miss. Milk may still be flowing
right now, but the replacement pipeline
can become thinner. If older cows are
kept in production longer and fewer
young animals are coming behind them,
the system becomes less flexible. And
when a flexible system gets hit, it
bends. When a tight system gets hit, it
can crack, and prices, they can move
faster. The forecast is that dairy is
not an immediate shortage story, but it
is also a fragile cost story that could
keep milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt
under pressure. For your household, I
would not frame dairy as an immediate
milk shortage. I would frame it as a
fragile cost story. Milk, cheese,
butter, yogurt, cream, and powdered milk
may remain available, but prices can
stay elevated or become more volatile if
feed, forage, or herd conditions worsen.
The practical steps, they're simple.
Keep powdered milk, shelf-stable milk,
or evaporated milk if your household
uses them. Freeze butter and some
cheeses when prices are good, and look
for local sources that are somewhat
insulated from national vol
vulnerabilities. You might pay a little
more, but the quality will be much
better.
Poultry and eggs. Number three is eggs
and poultry. This category is familiar
because most households have already
lived through egg price shocks. Eggs can
move quickly because the market is
sensitive to disruptions in the laying
flock. Feed matters, but right now the
bigger risk of volatility is disease.
When avian flu hits a flock, the supply
impact can show up quickly, and egg
prices can react much faster than many
other grocery categories. Avian flu is
still a real threat, but it is not the
dominant driver of egg prices this year
like it was in 2024 and 2025. Like beef,
chicken, and turkey also depend on feed
grains and soymeal. But if corn and
soybean supplies are relatively
comfortable, feed may not be the main
pressure point right now. The reason I
still keep eggs and poultry on this list
is that disease volatility can override
a good feed picture. You can have
cheaper feed and still have expensive
eggs if enough laying hens are removed
from production. For families, eggs
matter because they are not just a
breakfast food. They're protein, baking,
school lunches, quick dinners, and
ingredients inside processed foods.
Poultry matters because chicken is one
of the main lower-cost protein sources
many households use when beef becomes
too expensive. And if both eggs and
poultry move higher at the same time, it
squeezes the household protein budget.
The forecast is that eggs and poultry
may not be short because of feed right
now, but disease volatility can cause
sudden price spikes. The practical move
is to keep options. Powdered eggs or
freeze-dried eggs, they make sense if
your household can use eggs regularly
and you can rotate them. For baking,
learn substitutes like flax, chia,
applesauce, or aquafaba. And for
protein, you can keep canned chicken,
tuna, and salmon, as well as beans,
lentils, and shelf-stable meals, so
you're not locked into just one
category. Wheat products.
Number four is bread, flour, pasta, and
wheat products. This includes flour,
bread, pasta, crackers, cereal,
tortillas, baked goods, pancake mix, and
basic supplies. Wheat inventories, they
may look more comfortable right now, so
I do not want to overstate this as an
immediate shortage. But wheat still
belongs on the list because it is
exposed to fertilizer and farm input
costs, drought, winter wheat conditions,
acres decisions, and grain quality. The
important thing to understand is that
wheat pressure does not always show up
as empty bread shelves. It can show up
as higher flour costs, fewer shelves,
smaller packages, lower quality, or more
expensive processed foods. If a crop
comes in of lower quality, some of it
may be downgraded to feed rather than
for food grade use. If fertilizer and
fuel costs remain high while wheat
prices are low for growers, farmers may
have less incentive or ability to
increase production in the next cycle.
This is where the ideal fragile margins
matters. A big inventory today does not
automatically mean a healthy system
tomorrow. If producers are operating
near or below break even while high
input costs stay high, the next planning
cycle becomes one to watch. The forecast
is that wheat products look stable now,
but they remain exposed if fertilizer,
drought, input costs, or acres decisions
weaken the next crop cycle. For your
household, the solution is
straightforward. Keep flour, pasta,
oats, crackers, tortillas, rice, baking
powder, yeast, salt, and basic baking
ingredients on hand if you use them. If
you're more advanced and will actually
use them, wheat berries and a grain mill
can add long-term depth. But do not buy
tools or ingredients that will sit
untouched. Preparedness works best when
it fits your real meals and daily lives.
Rice. Number five is rice in global
staples. Rice is a different kind of
risk because this is not mainly a US
inventory story. Rice is one of the
world's most important staple foods and
global rice markets can react when
weather affects major producing regions.
El Nino, weak monsoons, drought, export
restrictions, and shrinking exportable
surplus can all move prices even when
American grocery shelves look normal.
Rice isn't going to suddenly disappear
from stores. The issue is that rice is
heavily tied to weather and water in
regions where hundreds of millions of
people depend on it every day. If
exportable surplus tightens, prices can
rise globally. Countries may also
restrict exports to protect their own
food security and when that happens,
buyers compete for less available
supply. We already saw this pattern in
2023 through 2025 when India's
climate-driven export ban on many rice
varieties tightened global supply and
pushed prices up 20%. The forecast is
that rice is a global watch item, not a
guaranteed US shortage item, but weather
and export pressure can raise prices
quickly. For your household, rice
remains one of the most simple pantry
staples to gradually stock now that
prices are low and stable. If your
family eats rice, add a little extra
before prices move. Rice remains a great
long shelf-stable calorie source. You
can store it in airtight containers and
for longer storage, use oxygen absorbers
and proper buckets or Mylar bags. Rotate
it through normal meals so it does not
become a forgotten emergency item in the
back of a closet.
Cooking oils. Number six on our list is
cooking oils and hidden ingredients.
This is one of the categories I think a
lot of people underestimate because
cooking oil is not just a bottle on your
pantry shelf. It's also in baked goods,
snacks, salad dressings, sauces,
restaurant food, frozen meals, and
processed foods. And when oil gets more
expensive, the pressure can hide in a
lot of other grocery items. The reason
this category matters is that cooking
oils are connected. Soybean oil, palm
oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, olive
oil, corn oil, and blended vegetable
oils, they do not move in complete
isolation. If one oil gets tight, food
companies and consumers often substitute
in others, and that can spread price
pressure across the whole category. We
saw that a few years ago when the war in
Ukraine disrupted sunflower oil
supplies. Manufacturers, they had to
reformulate with other oils. And we saw
it again with olive oil when drought and
heat in the Mediterranean cut harvest
and drove prices sharply higher. So, the
risk is not just one bottle getting more
expensive. The risk is that a problem in
one major oil can ripple into the oils
used in cooking, baking, snacks, sauces,
dressings, and processed foods. The
forecast is that cooking oils are among
the more underrated price pressure
categories because a shortage of one oil
can ripple through several others. The
solution is not to buy more oil than you
can rotate. Oils, they can go rancid,
especially if they are stored warm,
opened, or exposed to light and air. The
better approach is to keep a reasonable
rotation of oils and fats that your
household already uses. Store them cool,
dark, and sealed. Consider some
longer-lasting options that fit your
cooking, such as shortening, ghee,
tallow, or coconut oil. The goal is
flexibility, not a garage full of rancid
bottles.
Coffee, cocoa, and sugar.
Number seven on our list is coffee,
cocoa, and sugar. These are not the
first foods I would prioritize for
someone still building a basic pantry,
but they matter because they are
household staples, the morale-boosting
items, and common ingredients. Coffee is
a daily item for many families. Cocoa
and chocolate are comfort foods and
baking ingredients. Sugar is used in
baking, preserving, canning, drinks,
sauces, and shelf-stable food
production. The risk here is global
concentration. Coffee and cocoa depend
on specific growing regions that are
sensitive to heat, drought, rainfall
timing, disease, and shipping
disruptions. Cocoa is especially
concentrated in West Africa, which means
weather or disease problems in a few
countries can move the global market.
Coffee has a broader footprint, but it
is still highly exposed to weather in
key producing regions. Sugar can also
move when sugarcane areas are hit by
drought, heat, or erratic rainfall. The
forecast is that coffee, cocoa, and
sugar are likely to remain volatile
because they depend on concentrated
growing regions exposed to weather
disruptions. And for households, the
practical answer depends on how much of
these that you use. If coffee is part of
your daily routine, buy in advance when
prices are reasonable and store sealed
portions properly. Cocoa powder and
baking chocolate can be stored if you
bake. Sugar stores very well when kept
dry and protected from pests. These are
not panic items, but they are worth
considering because morale matters,
especially during tougher financial
seasons. Produce and nuts.
Number eight is fresh produce and nuts.
This is a category where disruptions can
show up quickly because fresh food is
perishable. A grain crop can sit in
storage, but lettuce, berries, tomatoes,
onions, citrus, and leafy greens, they
move on a much tighter clock. And we've
already seen how fast this can happen.
During the record Pacific Northwest heat
dome in June of 2021, extreme heat
damaged berries, cherries, wheat,
onions, and other crops across the
region, with some areas losing up to
half of the berry harvest and
significant portions of the cherry and
onion crops. And while every year is
different, the lesson is that fresh
produce does not need a nationwide
disaster to be disrupted. One regional
heat wave can damage crops before
harvest. On the other side of the
weather spectrum, a strong El Niño
pattern can raise the odds of heavy rain
and flooding in parts of California and
the Southwest. Though every event plays
out differently, flooded fields, muddy
harvest conditions, crop disease,
delayed planting, delayed picking, and
washed out transportation routes can all
reduce quality or keep produce from
reaching stores on time. And that's why
fresh produce can feel the impact of
weather faster than many shelf stable
foods. Nuts also deserve special mention
because tree crops behave differently
from annual crops. Almonds, walnuts, and
pistachios depend on long-term orchard
health, water, pollination, fertilizer,
and stable harvest conditions. A farmer,
they can shift some annual crop
decisions from one year to the next, but
an orchard represents years of
investment. If heat, drought, flooding,
wildfire smoke, disease, labor
shortages, pollination problems, or
harvest timing issues hit those trees,
the effects can be expensive and
difficult to replace quickly. The
forecast is that produce and nuts are
unlikely to vanish nationwide, but they
remain highly vulnerable to weather and
logistic shocks. Heat can damage crops
before harvest, while heavy rain can
flood fields, delay picking, spread
disease, and disrupt transportation. Add
labor shortages or trucking problems and
fresh produce can quickly shift from
normal supply to higher prices, lower
quality, or temporary shelf gaps. For
your household, this does not mean you
should stop buying fresh produce. It
just means that you should not build
your food security around the assumption
that fresh produce will always be cheap,
high quality, and available every week.
I would encourage you to use canned
vegetables, canned fruit, frozen
produce, dehydrated produce,
freeze-dried produce, and pickled foods
as backups. Learn the basics of
dehydrating, freezing, pickling,
fermenting, or canning if you're ready
for that step. If [snorts] you even have
a little space, grow small, high-use
items like herbs, greens, tomatoes,
peppers, sprouts, or microgreens. So,
that is a list I would be watching.
Beef, dairy, eggs, and poultry, wheat
products, rice, cooking oils, coffee and
cocoa, and fresh produce with nuts. But,
the larger point is not that every one
of those are going to disappear or that
you're going to need to buy them all
today. The point is that the food system
is not equally strong everywhere. Some
categories have a cushion. Others are
thin, fragile, concentrated, or exposed
to the next disruption. And that's where
prices tend to move first, and that is
where households feel the pressure
before the headlines catch up. This is
where preparedness needs to stay
practical. Do not build someone else's
pantry, build yours. If your family eats
pasta twice a week, deepen pasta and
sauce. If you use rice, add rice while
prices are still reasonable. If you cook
with oil every day, keep a rotation that
you can actually use. If dairy prices
are hurting you, keep shelf-stable
backups for cooking and baking. If meat
prices are stretching the budget, learn
a few meals that use less meat without
feeling like a sacrifice. In
preparedness, it's not about perfectly
predicting which item moves first, it's
about making sure that you are not
trapped when it does.
I would encourage you to pick three
categories from this list that we
covered that your household already uses
every week and add a little depth to
this month. This is not a panic cart or
a random emergency food purchase, just
normal food bought early, stored
properly, and rotated into real meals.
Every extra week of food, every backup
protein, every pantry meal, every jar
that you preserve, every can of
vegetables, and every local source that
you build, it gives your household more
margin, and margin is what turns early
warning into stability. If you want to
keep building from here, I'll link to
two videos here on the side of the
screen. One's going to show you how to
build a 3-week emergency food supply,
and the other is a recent deep dive that
we did on the upstream pressures behind
this evolving food crisis, from
fertilizer and fuel to drought, feed
costs, and fragile supply chains. One
helps you understand the problem, and
the other helps you to start building
the buffer. As always, stay safe out
there.