Grand Solar Minimum related question. Do you think we will have govt meat rationing? How soon?

I believe that a crisis would have to be created for rationing to have any acceptance in the US. What form that crisis takes shape in would be anyone's guess.

Without a exterior demand on supply, like wartime, I think that the approach (as OP mentioned) will be to let the markets set the price and to subsidize lower prices for as long as possible.

It is my opinion that we are already seeing this rise in prices in our sale prices. A year ago you could buy a pound of butter on sale for $2, now sale prices are $3. Campbell's cream of mushroom and chicken noodle soups could be had for .50 each if you waited but the best price that I've seen this year is .59. Most telling for me this year was the sale of canned vegetables. In the past there would be a week sale at .49 a can, this year they only had a two day sale at that price.

Also, pay attention to what is on sale. Not as many staples and canned goods but plenty of junk foods.

People who buy whatever they want without regard to whether it's on sale won't notice anything is wrong for a while. More frugal shoppers are already noticing. I would think that rationing would be instituted only as the supply chain was at the point of breaking down.

My guess is that we are a few years off from rationing unless the harvest this year is worse than even the GSM crowd thinks.

Make friends with a farmer yesterday.

We sell our beef, pork, lamb and poultry to the people who have always supported us and no matter what happens on a national level, locally if you were on board with us before things get bad, you're still in.

Lots of people talk about supporting family farms and eating local but 99% of them are full of shit. They do it because it's faddish and makes them feel good about themselves, but in reality they buy their food at the grocery store. I have families that come up every year and buy a side of beef, or a hog and we prepare it for them exactly the way they like, smoke bacon and hams, make a variety of sausages, freeze or cure it depending on what they want and it keeps us afloat.

If you are still living in a world where you worry about government rationing you've already made a boatload of bad choices.

Get out of the city and if you can't farm yourself, find a farmer who practices the kind of husbandry and stewardship you approve of and support them by buying directly.

Make friends with a farmer yesterday.

We sell our beef, pork, lamb and poultry to the people who have always supported us and no matter what happens on a national level, locally if you were on board with us before things get bad, you're still in.

Lots of people talk about supporting family farms and eating local but 99% of them are full of shit. They do it because it's faddish and makes them feel good about themselves, but in reality they buy their food at the grocery store. I have families that come up every year and buy a side of beef, or a hog and we prepare it for them exactly the way they like, smoke bacon and hams, make a variety of sausages, freeze or cure it depending on what they want and it keeps us afloat.

If you are still living in a world where you worry about government rationing you've already made a boatload of bad choices.

Get out of the city and if you can't farm yourself, find a farmer who practices the kind of husbandry and stewardship you approve of and support them by buying directly.

If we do go into rationing you should study how it's been done before. Under such a system the farmer might be required to sell his production to a government sanctioned buyer. Farms are inspected and the government has a good idea of what to expect from them.

The series "Wartime Farm" is available on Youtube the last that I looked. Rationing is something that they dealt with in nearly every show.