This does seem to indicate a need for government to create emergency food warehousing, and means of transportation of this emergency food to market, for three reasons. To keep food available:
1) During economic crises.
2) During agricultural crises.
3) When there is speculation causing inflation or shortage.
Ordinary market forces can be distorted by all three, which represents a tangible threat to the public. Free trade does not trump starvation or even public panic.
There are the problems of the expense of warehousing and of spoilage, but at least the latter problem has be reduced after a lot of research. If nothing else, the warehouses can be used as “buffers” of food from producers to institutional consumers, such as prisons or partly to the military, to help mitigate the “sell by” and “expiration” dates.
... to foster a diversified, self-sustaining economy (mostly by getting out of the way).
Other oil-rich socialist economies are aching from the drop in oil prices, such as Norway, Venezuela, etc. They absolutely cannot wrap their minds around boom/bust cycles.
Here in the USA, government workers imagine that the tax-funded teat will never run dry, or never stop increasing its flow. The unionized workers from the Midwest over the past thirty years have learned (or should have learned) that such a gravy train is finite.
Any job paying well has a limited run, and the workers should sock away their income while times are good, and prepare like crazy for their next career -- because the market is already looking at how "fix" the problem of their high wages and salaries.