But the point was, we were distributing what we could and turning most of it over to local control. However, we also knew we were going to be fucked come winter. Because our meteorologists were going "holy FUCK."
USDA was acting like a tofu-chicken. "Nationalization" was hammering what production there was. Something had to be done or the nation we were sworn to protect and serve was going to starve to death. Not just over the winter, but the projections were for widespread famine by next May.
"Emergency Supply Methodology" was a department that had gotten formed when the U.S. Army had to try to supply food to a famine in Somalia. What was absolutely evident to anyone who was there was that there was no reason for the famine. Yes, there was a drought. All a drought means is that you get less food from an acre. There were enough acres and enough acres that could be irrigated, that Somalia should have been able to feed itself.
It couldn't because of the security conditions. Farmers were being killed and driven off their lands because of the militias. That was what caused the famine. And in many areas it was intentional. See also Darfur, the Kulak famine and the Great Leap Forward. Starvation is a good way to enact "ethnic cleansing." Starving people is easier and cheaper than shooting them.
It got started as a think-tank to figure out how to do the best job you could in a fucked up situation. Most food distribution was done by Non-Governmental Organizations. (By the way, "random associators" are NGOs. Just very small ones.) One thing that was noted was that some NGOs were "better" at distribution than others. There were a huge number of apparent factors but it really came down to which were the most functionally pragmatic. That is, if the mission was to feed a population that was enemies with the local strongman, turning the food over to the strongman was non-functional for the mission. It would feed him and his henchmen and the people they liked. It would not feed the populace he was starving on purpose.
The way to avoid this was to use some of your precious NGO funds to hire enough "security" that the local strongman left you alone. And you could feed whoever you wanted. If you could also get some of the farmers farming again, that was a benefit.
If your personal opinion of violence was "nothing is ever settled by violence" then you lost your food to the strongman and therefore failed in your mission. It didn't matter how "actualized" you felt as you flew back to your hippie commune in California. You'd failed in your mission.
It was an unfortunate fact that the most "functionally pragmatic" groups tended to be Christian missionaries. Tended. Some of them were not "functionally pragmatic" and some of the secular NGOs were. But it was a general trend. It was a conclusion that was very quietly distributed, though. The Army had too often been accused of being friendly with Christian Fundamentalist groups.
They also looked at factors like "throughput." That is, if a group was given ten tons of relief supplies, how much of that actually got to the refugees or whatever. Again, Christian groups tended to have the highest throughput.
Here's an example of throughput in money. It involves charities pre-Plague. One of the richest charities in the U.S. pre-Plague was the March of Dimes. Every March people all over the country would walk around raising money for "childhood diseases." The March of Dimes would collect the money and then send it on to "worthy researchers."
MoD would never release its records to anyone but the IRS, but outside analysis indicated that only about 30% of the money collected actually went to "researchers." The other 70% went to "support" of . . . The March of Dimes. For every ten bucks some poor "marcher" collected, seven went to the MoD and only three went to researchers. The leadership was not volunteers. Indeed, above the "street" level there were no volunteers. Salaries for the upper management were astronomical. The president of the MoD had a private 737!
By the same token, one of the largest Christian charities in the world, Christian Children's Fund, would release its records. (As did many others, secular and religious.) They had an average throughput, every year, of over 90%. Nine bucks out of every ten reached the children it served.
Ninety percent throughput vs. thirty percent throughput. If you're going to contribute to a charity, do the math.
The U.S. Army did the math. They couldn't always pick and choose what NGOs they supported, but when they could they looked at the functionality of the NGOs and chose them on that basis. Yes, that tended to be Christian groups but the reality was they didn't care. They just wanted the stuff they were distributing to get to the people who needed it.
ESM was the first department to look at that methodically and come up with "key factors" for commanders to consider when choosing which NGO to support in their areas. They also expanded into producing pamphlets for commanders and staff on "key secondary response methods" in emergency and humanitarian relief missions. That is, how to get a country back on its feet. Especially agriculture in a famine.
But with first the Plague then the Chill, ESM became big doings. That had caused some problems as the minor little department suddenly became a focus and every fucking Fobbit wanted to jump on the bandwagon. For a while in the summer, I was told, "ESM" bumped out "transformational" as the big buzzword. Somebody pitching a new weapons system had to throw "ESM" in on the PowerPoint presentation to get it even looked at.
"This new super-duper artillery system is the killer app for ESM. ESM cluster systems can provide wide-spread terminal coverage of ESM priority materials . . ."
In other words, we can shoot the food out of the cannon at a high rate of fire and hope it doesn't knock anyone out when it gets there.
And, yes, that's from an actual presentation.
When I got to the department some of the hoo-hroo had settled down. Yes, it was a bigger department with a general in charge instead of a colonel. But some of the vampiric Fobbits that had grafted to it over the summer had been sent back to wherever they came from (PIO, Morale and Welfare, Systems Procurement) and the core guys were back in charge.
Its mission had changed, though. Use actual ESM to look at what was happening in the U.S. and "react, adapt and overcome" wherever the Army could be a benefit.
Bunch of smaller departments in the department, now. I was in the "Agricultural Emergency Response" department. I was a farmer. I had a degree in agronomy. I don't know what fairy godmother thought I could do anything there, but there I was.
And at first I couldn't do anything. I was a major. I carried the piss bucket. Meetings on "agricultural emergency response" involved colonels and generals. (None of whom, as far as I know, had agronomy degrees. But they were doing their best.)
My particular piss bucket was to be put in charge of the "Midwatch Phone Response Center."
That was not some sort of switchboard. It was a call center. It was a call center that commanders in the field could call for help when they were dealing with "agriculture emergency issues."
Okay, here's the thing about an agricultural emergency. Most of the time, by the time you realize you have an emergency, you're already fucked. Farmers have huge lead times. Go back to my dad telling me he was investing in triticale because the forecast for six months later was for "cooling regimes."