Number of Days' Supply of Food and Beverages in Retail Food Stores: A Civil Defense Study

Excerpts from the report: The Department of Agriculture entered into an agreement with the Bureau of the Census in early 1957 for a retail food inventory survey designed to show the days' supply of food, including nonconcentrated fluids, available in retail stores by regions and county population densities. The purpose of the county density breakdowns within regions was to provide a reasonably reliable basis for computing days' supply on hand for individual counties. In addition, provisions were made to indicate food inventories by storability type--fresh, frozen, canned and bottled, and other (includes dried and packaged)--and by kinds of business, and to show nonconcentrated fluids in terms of days' supply of beverages substitutable for drinking water. The study was made to provide Civil Defense authorities with data helpful in planning emergency feeding programs. The 1957 Retail Food Inventory Survey, conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the U. S. Department of Agriculture in line with the Department's delegation from the Federal Civil Defense Administration (presently the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization), indicated that slightly more than 10 days' supply of food, including nonconcentrated fluids, was in retail food store inventories of the Nation at the time of the survey. About 83 percent of the food was in forms normally storable for long periods, that is, canned and bottled and "other" (primarily dried and packaged); the balance was composed of fresh and frozen products. Regionally, the food supply ranged from a low of slightly less than 10 days in the South to almost 12 days in the West.