Food Anti-Hoarding Laws - how are you going to beat them?

Not a popular subject on the internet. It seems that hoarding money in bank vaults (electronic or real) is ok, but hoarding food and survival goods is not. The arguments usually go that while other people are starving you have the means to help them and we should share the burden. Of course, this does not apply to the rich helping the poor with money.

I looked on wikipedia and these are the references to it:
I use Wikipedia because it has references you can easily click on to learn more. I suggest you do the same

History of Wroclaw
The "turnip winter" of 1916/17 left many on the verge of starvation. Food-hoarding was decreed with capital punishment in the city. After four years of war Breslau's trade had fallen by 66 per cent. More than 8,000 people died of tuberculosis, and the population dropped from 540,000 to 472,000.

Hoarding
Civil unrest or natural disaster may lead people to hoard foodstuffs, water, gasoline and other essentials which they believe, rightly or wrongly, will soon be in short supply. Survivalists, also known as preppers, often stockpile large supplies of these items in anticipation of a large-scale disaster event.

This is where I heard about it first, on the program Who Do You Think You Are.
Rowland Hodge
He was created a Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours for his company's services during the First World War,[1][2] despite a conviction in 1918 for "food hoarding". The Hodges were fined £600 and £100 costs for hoarding over a tonne in food.

Marie Corelli
The story of Marie Corelli, the celebrated romantic novelist who overnight became a national hate figure when she was discovered hoarding food.


Food Speculation
This is an unbiased wikipedia article with current research


As you can see, there isn't much. Bing searches give you jacks--t too. So if you have any good info on the history of anti-hoarding laws and instances of them being enforced, please share.

HOWEVER, I FOUND THIS GOOD ARTICLE:
Very good article about where the US stands on this now.

Millenium Ark


On a slightly related topic, here is a good list of Food Riots on Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org...

I am waiting for the poop hoarding laws myself. I mean poop can help grow lots of food that can potentially be hoarded.
He who hoards the most food in SHTF is almost certainly going to want an[ equal or greater amount of poo on hand.

"Ooooh the laaaand of the freeeeeee and the hooooome of the braaaaave".

Because there is no such nonsense-law in Germany about hoarding

a reply to: Cinrad

That would seem to be unenforceable for the most part. Barring the most draconian of martial law.

Or the dreaded "see something, say something"...

i look at this issue from a different tack , to whit :

` ok you has horded " x" quantity of food - and things go south - now what are you going to do with it " ?

think about this - preferebly before replying

At the risk of turning this site into facebook:


Or worse, a criminal.

In a disaster those who have more than others will have it taken away. Its called looting when stores get ransacked.

If you are the only one on your block to have smoke coming out chimney that smells of cooking, you're in trouble.

Unless you share, that is.

Like a life boat in the ocean, no one is allowed more ration than anyone else. Those that hoard or pilfer from the 'stores' are in for it.

"No, officer, this isnt food hoarding, thats a couch... Made out of granola bars... As art!
And that? Its just a beanbag chair filled with rice. We find it comfortable. All the other 'food stuff'? Arts and crafts supplies. We make a lot of macaroni and other tubular pasta necklaces, bracelets, and jewelry, and just about any other art/craft type of thing you could possibly think of that involves using edible material."

They can come to get your food stores in an emergency, killing you if they desire. It is under the term "for the good of the people" Now the thing is that that food gotten that way usually only benefits a small amount of the people at higher levels of society. It is not for the good of all people.

a reply to: Cinrad

I cant stand rich people

Makes me laugh

Most urbanites cannot recognize food until it has been packaged and labeled for them.

You might think that you cannot grow an urban garden in your yard or an abandoned lot because your neighbors might steal from it. But you'd be wrong. Unless the tomatoes are red, 19 out of 20 people won't even recognize a food-producing plant. As long as you don't plant in rows, you're cool.

Field and Stream magazine ran an editorial several years ago. One of the editors was biking on a bike trail in an urban metropolis. Along the trail, he saw absolutely massive blackberry bushes dripping with fruit so ripe it was bursting in the morning sun. So he took a break and started eating them. Then he filled his cap with them, his water bottle, and what ever else he could find.

A boy wanders along, and asks him what he doing, so the editor explains. Just when the boy has the fold of his own shirt filled with succulent blackberries, the boy's dad comes into view. The boy's father is indignant--he makes the kid drop all the berries: "We don't know if those are poisonous!" the dad hisses at his child. The editor explained that they were blackberries, obviously planted by the city to stop erosion on a hillside and provide animal cover. The Dad tells his son "We don't know if that man knows what he is talking about. Let's go get you some hand sanitizer."

Seriously. In the same town where someone is prosecuted for plowing up their front yard and planting a row-crop garden, someone could plant carrots as if they were ground cover under a tree, and the code enforcement people wouldn't know the difference. you could plant, instead of ornamental cabbage.... actual cabbage! And no one would know. Likewise a row of garlic behind the ground-cover of monkey grass. same with cucumbers. Just pick them after dark, so your neighbors don't notice!

A potted rosemary bush is undetectable to most surburbanites, who love Italian cooking. Ditto bush beans.

The rabbits that you attract should only be taken during the winter months, due to tularemia. But they'd make great Hasenpfeffer.

To make a short story long, if it's not packaged as food and presented as food, the sheep will never notice....

a reply to: redempsh

I once noticed a spicy cabbage growing as an ornamental plant outside of a holiday inn I stayed at. I had a nice snack every time I went in and out of the front doors.

So there is a fundamental difference between survivalists and self-reliant-ists

Survivalists in the classic sense are deeply influenced by military culture. They favor a technological solution, and tend toward a "bug-out" stance for dealing with local emergency.

Self-reliant folks are more influenced by agri culture. They favor techniques over technology, and tend toward a "hunker-down" mentality for dealing with adversity.


In this dichotomy, the survivalist is far more succeptible to authorities seizing your food-stocks. So a survivalist will focus on camouflage and cache.

My previous post operates from a self-reliant stance. For avoiding the food grabbers, this worldview has the following advantages:

1. Most authoritarians don't know beans about where food comes from. They are looking for bags of rice and MREs. If you don't have those items that are prepackaged and ready for transport, they are going to care a lot less about taking stuff.

2. Gardening is a process, rather than a hoard of finished foodstuffs. Even with seasonal harvests, you tend to not store huge stockpiles that make a tempting target. The goal of intensive gardening is not to construct a food-plot, as it is to construct an environment, a food-web that benefits you. Even if a food grabber drives over your garden in a fit of rage, a lot of it will grow back. Even if you are jailed or "re-educated" for an extended period, some of the garden may still be growing when you return. Depending on the passivity of your system, even aquaponics can be resurrected after a period of neglect.

3. People who don't garden, don't imagine that a suburban house-lot contains enough space to feed a family. The truth is it comes close. And one of the ways you can overcome a limited space is to focus on valuable products. Rosemary grows very well as a weed, and is a basic seasoning for meat. It will be more valuable, the longer a food crisis goes on. Likewise with beekeeping. Honey is worth north of $8 per lb. now. Since sugar is one of the 5 ways to cure meat, honey will be critical in areas that cannot raise their own sugar cane. While a small holding may not produce enough food, it CAN produce enough value, to sustain you in a crisis.

a reply to: redempsh

As well, many herbs flower, and fennel looks like a fancy grass. Swiss chard comes in bright colours, and nasturtiums are flowery and edible.
If a person does border edges, and little rounded fancy garden arrangements, rather than square box raised beds or garden rows, most people will just think "nice flowers".
People need to unstructured, get out of the boxes.

Alliums like chives, leeks in their own spot. Layering heights, types, fancy rocks, different heights in the landscaped "garden".....
If flowering herbs like bee balm are mixed in....basically make sure all the flowers are edible. Especially if you've got bees making honey. 👍

There are laws against hoarding food and survival gear because "they" don't want people being able to survive without big brothers teet in the event of an emergency/disaster. It's hard to convince someone to relocate to a concentration camp, er, I mean a "happy" camp when that person can take care of themselves.

a reply to: 191stMIDET

That's the sad part about the supposedly "land of the free". Which the USA isn't anymore.

In Canada, they want us to be able to support ourselves with food and water if possible for at least up to a month, because they can't always get to all of us. We're too spread out in a big sparsely populated country.
Our media actually tells us to keep the pantry well stocked, especially rural areas.
Even still in the aftermath of the Fort Mac fire (almost 90,000 evacuated), there's little groups of campers set up in fields- some people still cannot go back to their homes, so they just set up where they can until the cold season hits.
People who have large amounts of stored foods have an easier time feeding others in need, in tough times.

a reply to: redempsh

2. Gardening is a process, rather than a hoard of finished foodstuffs. Even with seasonal harvests, you tend to not store huge stockpiles that make a tempting target. The goal of intensive gardening is not to construct a food-plot, as it is to construct an environment, a food-web that benefits you. Even if a food grabber drives over your garden in a fit of rage, a lot of it will grow back. Even if you are jailed or "re-educated" for an extended period, some of the garden may still be growing when you return. Depending on the passivity of your system, even aquaponics can be resurrected after a period of neglect.

But they can take your land, your crops, your supplies, and equipment. They might let you stay there to produce for them, but they will still own it and you.

10998--Federal seizure of all food supplies and resources, public and private and all farms and equipment;

11002--Empowers the Postmaster General to register every single person in the US

11000--Federal seizure of American people for work forces under federal supervision, including the splitting up of families if the government so desires;

11004--Federal seizure of all housing and finances and authority to establish forced relocation. Authority to designate areas to be abandoned as "unsafe," establish new locations for populations, relocate communities, build new housing with public funds;

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

That is true.

It was always true. In the past, "they" had some self-imposed limits. Now, no longer. But there are still constraints on what they can do. You may still fall victim to their oppression. But if there is an emergency where they must seize food, you know the situation will already be desperate. A government that seizes food and production equipment is doing so because it is on the verge of collapse.

When you see that behavior, you will also notice that their agents have "no-go zones" where they refuse to work, because the climate is too warm to be healthy.

You may remember, as I do, a time when the federally-mandated speed limit was 55 mph. Now it varies, and some places are up to 85 mph on federal highways. Did the feds lose their appetite for control? Hardly. What they lost was the power to enforce their laws. They removed the old 55 limit because the states were helping their own people fight the law in court, and coming up with a parallel yet competing system of state speed limits. By the time Congress actually repealed the federal law in 1995, it was not enforced in most of the nation, even on a nominal basis. The feds lost that one. Lost completely.

A modern president couldn't even put such a law in place.


My point is that there is still some influence the peasants have, even when they are not actively rioting. The trick is to survive long enough for the tide to turn.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
Federal seizure of American people for work forces under federal supervision, including the splitting up of families if the government so desires;

Utterly disgraceful that any form of government anywhere in the world would decree the right to impose complete loss of liberty through enforced enslavement of the people.

a reply to: ManFromEurope

there are also laws on the books here in the States about hitching your horse in downtown after dark...

Just as I imagine there are silly laws on the books where ever it is in Europe you're at.