That's a possibility Bryce Wrigley thinks about a lot. A lifelong farmer, in 1983 Wrigley moved with his family from Burley, Idaho to Delta Junction. Today the Wrigleys farm 1,700 acres in Delta, growing mostly barley, wheat, and peas. At home, Wrigley is surrounded by food, but he's also painfully aware of the gap between the amount of food Alaska farmers produce and what the state needs to feed itself.
"I think it's pretty clear we have a food security problem here," Wrigley told me. ...
Several people interviewed for this story suggested it would take between three and 10 days for grocery store stocks to run out if shipping were interrupted, but such figures are difficult, if not impossible, to confirm. "I hear statistics saying we have three days or four days or five days of food on the shelf," said Milan Shipka, who studies Alaska's food system as a professor of animal science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Nobody knows for sure what that figure is." He added, however, that "we do know there's a relatively short supply."
But Andrew Stevens of the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management isn't worried.
"There are hazards for everything," Stevens said. He mentioned that many of the companies involved in shipping food to Alaska are enormous entities accustomed to operating byzantine, intercontinental supply chains. "These companies are logistical giants," he said. "We're a small link in their chain." If one part of the transportation system was interrupted-say, by damage to the Anchorage port-the companies would find another way to deliver their goods. "They can always drive them up," he said.
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