National food reserves are usually used like this (as a price buffer rather than a something to support security).
For example read about the National Raisin Reserve here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87144/15-strategic-reser...
Even with Covid we saw some of the hindsight comments. In the early days it was thought that ventilators were the bottleneck and they should have been stockpiled. But that seems to not have been an issue in the end. And if you were now to stockpile ventilators, perhaps the next pandemic would require something else.
Of course every country has stockpiles of fuel and grains.
If you think any first world nation is entirely reliant on global trade for subsistence of its populace (yes, even UK) you’ve been playing far too much Civilization. Now if you want to talk about the impact of globalism on crop markets and by extension a small operator, you have something to discuss. But you’re not saying that.
It’s ludicrous to think that just because there is more global trade all governments have given up on their own interests and are just subject to the wills of “globalism”.
Agree. But how do we know they're full? ;-)
According to this hard-to-read map [1], Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal also seems to be below 1.
0: http://www.fao.org/3/i2493e/i2493e03.pdf 1: http://www.fao.org/3/i5222e/i5222e.pdf
We had grain elevators and other stockpiles of essentials. A country would save grain from summer to feed it through winter, and have months spare. This does not result in some imaginary 'wastefull living'.
Obviously you don't stockpile coffee and selfie sticks