Your comment inspired me to do a little reading, since this is an interesting idea (and maybe represents an opportunity in the supply chain... maybe what we need is better/newer technology for long-term storage of grains/flour/etc.).
Long-term grain storage concerns: https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equ... ; as a non-expert, this begs the question of why more climate control is not done, to create indefinite/permanent storage (probably just not economical to do so, but given disruptions like COVID-19, maybe this will change?).
>> flour can (should?) be frozen for long-term storage
It can be forzen but there are lots of difficulties in doing so. Top of the list is moisture. Frozen flower is cold. If you take it out and put it on the shelf flour will condensate moisture, quickly turing it into a useless lump. Microwaving it is difficult. You have to warm it in a totally dry environment. A frozen chicken breast doesn't have these issues.
Yup. Grains are so incredibly cheap that's it's not worth preserving them.
My favorite stat to pull out at parties:
The price of a bushel of wheat (aka 60 pounds) has been approximately one British pound since the mid 1300's.
It's currently worth about 4 British pounds, but that says more about how much the British pound has declined against the USD than it says about the price of wheat.
First: Its only 'cheap' because Wheat is an almost universally subsidized crop in most of the World. Which means the farmers externalities are obscured in what is actually a ubiquitous but environmentally challenging crop to grow in terms of land use, and irrigation. Harvesting, too if you don't have access to modern combines and want viable yields. Not to mention growing practices themselves and if its a GMO crop its often sprayed into oblivion with all kind of pesticides that cross contaminate and pollute water supplies and kill local insects and soil bacteria, microbes, and unsettle the flora/fauna.
Second: The USD-GBP bushel parallel is also not correct as neither are what they were meant to actually represent since becoming fiat: A pound sterling in the case of GBP, and grains of silver (371.25) in the case of USD. The measurements are off for the analogy that you're trying to make.
Can you please point me to where this is investigated? I know rough vacuum-grade vacuum-packed frozen meat rates a 3-year shelf life [1]. I've yet to find information beyond rough vacuum [2], though. I would imagine ultra-high grade vacuum, in a retort bag, in a medical-grade freezer (-140 to -150° C [3], well beyond even commercial food deep freezers in the -30 to -50° C range) can extend that shelf life, but I've never found anyone who experimented and wrote it up.
Flour can be stored indefinitely in the freezer supposedly [4], but I haven't seen anyone investigate vacuum-sealed, oxygen-absorbed, frozen flour shelf life. Whole wheatberries when vacuum sealed with nitrogen flush will keep for 25 years at room temperature, don't know what adding freezing will do.
>> I know rough vacuum-grade vacuum-packed frozen meat rates a 3-year shelf life
That is the number for taste, not food safety. There is lots of guidance that meet is "good" for a few months to a few years. But it is also true that people have eaten mammoth meat frozen for thousands of years. The reality is that long-frozen meat will not taste as good as meat only frozen a few days.
>>Because freezing keeps food safe almost indefinitely, recommended storage times are for quality only. Refer to the freezer storage chart at the end of this document, which lists optimum freezing times for best quality.
Dried grain, when sealed against humidity, is stable in a passive store like an old mine for wau over half a century. So, no, grain storage is incredibly low-maintenance, compared to a freezer.
