I think it's really awesome for people to grow their own food but at the same time we need to have our eyes open - industrial ag is the backbone of our civilization, our way of life, and our freedom to do anything else with our time is dependent on it.
There are home gardeners out there who tout how much of their food they grow but curiously never seem to address that the bulk of their calories come from your industrial staple grains and starches.
I've had boxes of emergency rations (add hot water to get some rice meal) in our house, but they usually just advertise lasting for just a few years.
For dry / packaged goods (dried beans, lentils, pasta, rice, spices, toast, etc) you can basically ignore the best-before date. Sugar (or -syrups, honey) & salt keep indefinitely.
'Wet' stuff, as long as sealed hermetically (like canned goods, shelf-stable drinks etc): similar. Seal broken: all bets are off. Use eyes / nose / texture as indicator, or don't risk it.
Long storage of these isn't a safe-to-eat, but a quality issue. Taste, sometimes texture, and vitamin / nutritional value deteriorates over time. 'Wet' stuff generally faster. Up to a point where you're left with tasteless calories with 0 vitamin content (but still safe to eat!).
Also: say you have 5y worth of food stored. Then you'd need to replace that vast amount of food semi-regularly (like use 1y worth, give away & replace the rest), which is very costly. Or consume everything yourself (FIFO). In which case a 5y's worth store would mean eating -on average- 5y old food. Not to mention the cost/waste if that supply is somehow lost (flooding, housefire, bugs, rodents, whatever).
Imho a 1 month up to 1 or 2y supply is a better compromise. Modest space/$ investment & most stuffs can be eaten within their BB date. But enough for peace of mind or ride out a wave of economic / social mayhem. Add some vitamin pills if you're worried about fresh fruits/veggies remaining available.
I've grown my own food at times. And imho substinence farming is underrated. But as a hedge against catastrophy? No. Do it for fun, do it if you have a large garden & like your independence. Or prefer the organic-everything & knowing where your food comes from.
Otherwise just buy food in bulk & stuff it in cellar (or wherever).
I got some potatoes from the local market, from a region that traditionally is planting a lot of them. These were the best potatoes I had in a long time. They were more yellow in color, much denser and tastier.
I also got some tomatoes that were quite big, softer meat and very good taste. These kinds of tomatoes can not be sold in big retail chains because they are easily damaged by transport (soft skin).
I saw a documentary about seeds. A french lady was beeing harassed by different french institutions because she was mailing traditional plant seeds to people. In Romania there are still people that use their own seeds but we also have people buying the same seeds that comercial farmers use. In this case the produce will taste more or less the same like the ones from the big stores.
PS: I forgot to mention, my potatoes had deep "eyes" (roots) inside them. This means that they can not be peeled with a machine in a factory. They are not comercially viable.
I had been on half a litter of veg soup plus 2 eggs plus 2 sausages, some bread, some nuts. A day. For months. And I felt absolutely fantastic. Now okay its a tat too short, lack variety and all, and its to note i wasnt working much. I have since got more resources and been able to eat a more balanced diet. But this gives you an idea of what we are talking about here when we say you can eat less. You still need some amount of calories every day but its really all different on many levels and no chance you go on 4k calories for no reasons other than "youre hungry". This 16 hours fasting is marvelous. It's all about the intestines somehow. You want them clean.
Please adapt to your own situation, you may have physical conditions that could affect your ability to do that, check with a specialist.
muscle is extremely important for maintaining mobility and independence as you age. with this diet, even with training, it will be impossible to build any. past 30, without outside intervention, humans lose around 10% of muscle mass per decade. what happens when you're 70 and can barely walk after losing what little muscle you have? best have a reserve...
and the healthier ones are similarly lean but more muscular.
also, while caloric needs drop, protein needs rise as older people show blunted anabolic responses to protein and thus need more protein to maximize muscle protein synthesis
2 eggs = 12g 2 sausages = 14g 2 handfuls nuts = 14g 1 cup beans = 12g
According to[0], a hectare (100m x 100m) should yield 25,000kg in a year. That's a whole heck of a lot of potatoes.
Drop it by 2 orders of magnitude (10mx10m) and you are looking at 250kg /year. Which sounds like a reasonable amount both for a large garden and human consumption.
This article also reports that Niedersachsen potato fields (large state in northern Germany) produce an average of 45,000 kg/hectare, or about 18,000 kg/acre.
It's way more efficient for everybody to divide labor this way than to have each household be its own independent and self-sustaining system.
As my econ prof loved to say all models of the world dont assume there is mindlessly ambitious J P Morgan out there. And have nothing interesting to say about what to do about him.
Potatoes alone take 60 to 90 days to grow (weather and varieties) and 'only' take up two to three days of full work (at most) per bed per crop (split the above into (say) three or four rotating beds).
The work is to turn and fork grown potatoes out, and prepping | weeding soil at same time, and then (same time) working new potato cuttings with eyes back in - then cleaning and storing - as potatoes are consumed bits that have budding eyes can be cut out and set aside for planting next time.
If you've got a spare back acre you can pretty much swap gym time for garden time and stay active, healthy, and mostly eat food you grow yourself (location dependant).
His back's fine and he spent a decade on shearing teams.
Work steady, smarter not harder.
I don’t think the rest of the world was much different.
Anyway, I wonder how much of that was due to limits of technology/knowledge (they just didn't know how to grow more) vs. limits in social organization (they didn't grow more because it wasn't worth it for them).
The average person needs <1m calories per year.
Do that and you end up with a big clay garden pot that'll grow anything.
But yep, that's the game with agriculture, long term steady work to improve conditions, soils, drainage, mulch pits, septic lines, fruit trees, etc.
I've got a video somewhere of me hitting the ground on our block with spade in the summer and it bouncing off like it hit solid concrete, crazy stuff.
I bet you a beer they don't grow olive trees and grains enough to feed themselves in 50 Square meters.