How To Prepare Your Long-Term Food Storage

Every year, disasters and emergencies impact hundreds of thousands of lives, and the number appears to be growing if the current worldwide pandemic is included. Every tragedy or epidemic has long-term consequences, such as people being deprived of basic necessities such as food and water. After all that we've gone through in recent years, you can't help but wonder whether a food crisis is on the way. Given the growing cost of groceries, the halt in meat packing production, failing farms, labor difficulties, and political upheavals, one might think that food storage is on the horizon.

To prepare for and survive a food shortage, identify potential risks in your area, inventory your current resources (especially food and water), develop a food storage plan to grow both short and long term food storage, start a garden (even if it's small or only indoors), learn to preserve foods that you buy or grow yourself, raise chickens and other livestock, and stock up on other emergency preparedness items.

It is critical that you retain your strength throughout a crisis. Eating nutritiously can assist you in doing this. Here are some key dietary guidelines:

-- Menus should be planned to provide as much diversity as feasible

-- Consume at least one well-balanced meal every day

-- Drink enough fluids to keep your body running smoothly (two quarts a day).

-- Consume enough calories to allow you to do any essential tasks.

-- To ensure proper nourishment, include vitamin, mineral, and protein supplements in your stockpile.

Use common sense while selecting what foods to stock. Consider what you might be able to utilize and how you can prepare it. Foods that are difficult to prepare and are unlikely to be consumed might be expensive to store.

Create a list of what you already use

The most difficult element of preserving food is deciding what you need. The first step is to examine what you and your family eat. Make a note of your diet for a week and identify the foods you eat on a regular basis, such as rice, oats, beans, fruits, or whatever else you consume.

Begin to cross items off your list that have a short shelf life. When we prep, we attempt to preserve food that will last a long time. It would be useless to purchase items that expire after a month and must be replaced on a regular basis. Our goal is to be both financially and survival-wise efficient.

What Should You Keep in Your Pantry?

Whenever it comes to filling your pantry, only purchase and keep goods that you currently consume on a daily basis. There's a reason for this: if you have to rely on your pantry during an emergency, you and your family will be stressed out. If you're forced to consume items you don't like or don't typically eat, it will make the situation much more difficult to bear.

One advantage of storing up on familiar foods is that it makes it easy to rotate your inventory. Periodic rotation prevents food waste by allowing it to expire or spoil.

Here is a list of common food items and their shelf-lifes you should consider in your food storage: 

-- Vegetable Oils 2 years

-- Lentils and peas are legumes 5 years

-- Oatmeal 25 years

-- White Rice 25 years

-- Pasta 25 years

-- Dried beans 25 years

-- Salt, sugar and spices 25 years

-- Honey 25 years-- Instant soup mixes

-- Canned meats from 2-4 years, depends

-- Chicken, beef, and vegetable bouillon cubes 10 years

-- Dehydrated Fruits 25 years

-- Coffee and Tea 10 years

-- Powdered milk 20 years

-- Sodium bicarbonate 2 years

-- Milk powder 1 year

-- Vitamin C

-- Formula or baby food 6 months

Families may also desire to keep 365 multivitamin/mineral pills per person to assist compensate for probable dietary deficits in emergency scenarios. Package expiration dates should be carefully examined.

You'll see that we're just looking at pantry contents here, which require no refrigeration. This is because we want to ensure that the food will endure in the event of a power loss. Of course, if you have a generator, you can power a fridge and freezer, but it will soon deplete your back up energy in the event of electricity outage.

Where do you put all this food?

So you live in a small apartment with hardly enough space to put your winter coat, much alone a few months' worth of additional food. You have a small refrigerator and just one cabinet, so where do you put everything? Usually, this is the time to experiement. We've encountered folks who hide their belongings beneath furniture, in extra closets throughout the house, or even in a basement storage area in an apartment complex. Whatever you choose, make sure the room is clean, dry, and, if feasible, low in humidity!

Basic Water Storage

No plan would be complete for an emergency without an abundant supply of potable water. The average daily usage rate is two gallons (7.5 liters) of water per person. That implies you'll need a lot of water. By this criterion of consumption, you should be able to meet that need if you have eight one-liter water bottles stored for each day of the hypothetical emergency scenario per person. Moreover, water bottles have an indefinite shelf life, therefore storing them for long periods of time before they go stale  is not a concern. 

Water is not difficult to obtain so far, therefore you should be able to quickly acquire the amount you need with ease. The most difficult aspect of dealing with water is finding ample space to store it.

Conclusion

You've stored up and are ready for the next disaster/emergency. But the food pantry may be used for a variety of purposes; it might be as simple as a place to keep excess food you buy on sale, or as complex as a life raft for you and your family in the case of an emergency.

Knowing that if a crisis or emergency strikes, you won't have to hurry down to the store to scour and scrape the the remaining food items off the shelfs provides one with a matchless comfort of mind . Instead, you will simply take a trip to your storage room and rummage among the shelves for a delicious supper for yourself, and your family. And one final word of advice: Rotating your long-term food storage is an excellent method to expose your family to the flavors of your emergency supply while keeping it fresh. Apply the same “first in, first out” concept to your long-term supply as you would to your short-term supply. As you cycle your food storage through your daily meals, the initial products you bought should be utilized first, followed by later ones, which you may have on hand in case of an emergency.