[munk-a]

I'd actually disagree pretty strongly with this. For most of human history the spoilage rate of pretty much everything we produced was so high that stockpiling goods for the sudden economic shocks was solely reserved to governing bodies. Remember how you built ten bazillion granaries in Civ? Sure, the game has taken quite a few liberties with history but we have evidence of communal food storage going all the way back to Babylon. When's the last time you saw a granary or any sort of food stock that was actually built and maintained by a government in the modern world?

Before the modern epoch it was really rare to personally stockpile goods due to the extreme possibilities of spoilage (everyone loves weevils and moths right?) - that's only been an option in the near history.

[blix]

For most of the pre-modern era, 'governing body' simply means a group with enough stockpiled resources, especially food, to project power. Anyone who could get in on this action tried to. Spoilage is an issue, but humans came up with many neat tricks to work around this, many of which are still used today (fermentation, for example). Anyone who didn't want to live or die soley by the whims of the local warlord during a harsh winter had to maintain their own food stockpile.

The great lie of Civ is to present this as centrally organized when for most of human history this power was very finely decentralized due to the expense of communication and logistics. But as socities become more centralized food stockpiles haven't disappeared. Many governments still maintain food stockpiles, especially poorer countries.

[anttisalmela]

National Emergency Supply Agency in Finland did have real granaries not a long ago - they still have emergency supplies of grain, nowadays it is just done by owning grain and paying private companies to store it in their normal logistical network.

In the beginning of the pandemic the agency was heavily in local news when they started deliveries of protective gear from their stockpiles - but to be honest, some rubber bands of the stored masks did need replacing.