I wish that I could purchase long term storage foods that would last forever without any rotation. But the truth is you can’t, rotating long term storage is always a problem. Now because I have been into food storage for about 50 years, I have occasionally run into problems with shelf life. Just the other day I opened some buckets that were buried in my storage. They contained wheat that is about 30 + years old. It looked good, so I decided to see if it would still sprout.
After running a sample through my sprouting trays, I found that a small percentage would start to sprout. Since this wheat would still provide calories, it is not completely useless.  But since it would have lost some of its nutrients, I decided to replace it.
Fortunately, there were only nine 4-gallon buckets of it. This makes for easy replacement. I will go down to the LDS Cannery that is located about forty minutes from my home and purchase nine cases of wheat. Each case contains 6 #10 cans of wheat packaged for long-term storage. At a cost of just $2.75 a can, I will get 56 cans for a total cost of $148.50. Not a bad price and it is packaged to last 30 years.
The old wheat will not go to waste, it will be used to fatten up a pig. Even when you make a mistake like this one there is always a use for the food.  If for some reason, I could not replace the wheat I would go ahead and consume it. It just wouldn’t have its full nutritional value.
Many preppers have the opinion that they will need to live off their stored foods in the immediate future and that very well may turn out to be right. But I have felt that way in the past particularly during the cold war when we came close to war with the Soviets and I am still here.
So my advice is even when you store long-term foods that are designed to last for 20-30 years you still need to have a plan to rotate them. You never know what the future will bring. Remember how recently Y2K seemed and that food you purchased for it is now at least 16 years old.
Howard
