Sensible food buffer

[Foodstore1]

What is the best way to build up a food store to have a buffer in case of shortages/to avoid the chaos around panic buying.

We live rurally so have the luxury of more space than when we lived in the city and a big garden (plenty of things I do miss about the city too).

Very aware that is there is a food shock from fertiliser disruption related to the war on Iran the risk is mainly for developing countries.

What I am doing:

1. Adding extra basics we use anyway with a long date each time I shop.
2. Plastic storage boxes in the garage so the extra stuff doesn’t get spoilt and I can see what we have. I guess we have two medium boxes, which equates to a few months of basics.
3. Growing as much as possible. Organic, bee friendly, etc. cuts food miles. Highly recommend berries as they are a great garden addition and kids love them.

4 We have had chickens for a while. They eat appropriate leftovers (alongside their proper food). Really think hard if you can cope with the garden destruction and work to keep them happy.

How much are people stocking up?

What are your priorities?

Wondering whether it is going to get to the point where more than the basics is a good idea?

I am working on a veg patch and am starting renovations on an old green house at my parents

We are also very rural and do have a drive to the shops and then a much further drive to look for anything else if it isn’t in the local shop. The risk of fuel restrictions was a factor in why I wanted to have a really good stock. It is the basics we use anyway, so none of it will go to waste.

I have done it gradually, some before the current crisis, so this sort of shopping shouldn’t create major issues. The Covid situation definitely changed how I planned the garden, as I now try and plant as many berries and fruit areas as possible. Also a lot of vegetables.

But that's the whole point, don't you see? If 30 million households all decide to buy one extra tin of baked beans on just one week, the supply chain is 30 million tins down at the beginning of the following week. People notice that the supermarket shelf has far fewer tins than usual, so they buy an extra one the second week as well, thereby compounding the problem. That is exactly how shortages and panic buying start.

I really have no idea what's sensible at this point, but from my relatives who really have lived through war, sanctions and the collapse of supply chains, the common wisdom is that rice, chickpeas or lentils, and olive oil are of most importance. If you add a source of vitamin C to that, you can in theory go on quite a long time with no significant health problems. Eventually you'd get B12 and other micronutrient deficiency, but it would be months to years if you started out with decent stores.

How do you feel about not having one buffer tin of beans yourself? What happens if you get snowed in?

I have four children, so I don't feel it's responsible for living hand to mouth for their sake. How do you feel about parents like me who can't survive on one tin of beans a week?

This is something that actually made me scared during covid. People were videoing people's shopping and posting it on SM during covid. Baiting outrage at people who had bought more than one of anything.

Do you think there needs to be personal responsibility or should the state step in when food runs out?

During covid I actually went to three shops a week to get what we needed without attracting attention. So three times the risk of spreading covid but three times less risk of people either confronting me or starting a witch hunt on SM for me.

At the end of the day I'm going to do what I need to do to feed my kids. I'm not going to say "sorry you need to share that tin between the six of us because it one tin perhousehold."

Also, how do I know the next person who is a household of one will buy the rest of the shelf?

If you look at who holds all the power they aren't their due to their selflessness. The Whitehouse are betting on the creating this shit. They are doing it for personal profit.

I understand the motive to be be feckless and hope someone else will fix things for you. I am pretty sure if I did only have a day's worth of food and lockdown happened tomorrow I could get the state to feed my kids. I'm just not convinced that's right too. Neither is driving to the shops every day for food.

There's got to be some understanding that different households do things differently. We are not all single living in a city and buying tonight's meal in Tesco express on the way home. Some of us buy 15kg of rice in Cistco and 48 loo rolls and it doesn't last very long at all.

I don’t stock up at all beyond like from a cost saving perspective. I’m definitely not panic buying pasta.

But long term, growing your own is very sensible. You can grow food in a very small garden. We once only had a tiny front bed on the road and we filled it with kale and carrots and sweetcorn. Grow things that replenish themselves when you cut them (spinach, kale, chard) or things that will last all winter like winter squashes (crown prince is great). It’s not going to save your life when the apocalypse comes, but it will save money over buying it weekly at £2 a pop for some green veg.

Buy meat in bulk from your local farmer. You can buy a whole lamb, butchered, or half a pig or whatever. It will save you money for better quality and cut the middleman. It also tends to be better packaged for long term freezing. We keep pigs and we have enough pork to last us months. Plus chickens.

I only bulk buy staples when on offer. Because it’s cheaper and they have plenty on the supply chain to put it on offer.

We also have chickens, which pay for themselves in terms of food from selling eggs, plus we always have eggs. I would not recommend in a normal house garden though because they really do need a lot of land to roam on unless you want a mud pit in the winter

This is similar to my approach. The supermarkets where I am often have offers on quite random things (not in the UK). Organic passata with a really long shelf life. Organic oats were on palettes and on offer. The only thing is I do check the date as sometimes with these promotions it is things with a short date. Surprisingly this type of item just seems to sit in the supermarket when on offer. Even for the sake of saving money on meals these are really useful and cheap basics. If it is crisps or drinks it is gone in a day.

I completely agree on growing veg. Fruit is also really easy. I don’t know why there isn’t more encouragement to do this. Berries are notorious for being packed with pesticides and the organic ones are very expensive. The UK imports most of its fruit, so growing it at home cuts air miles. Plus a diverse mix of fruit trees in a neighborhood is great for supporting pollinators. Even in a small garden column fruit trees would work.

I have a smaller garden so no space for chickens, but we have an apple tree and a very well stocked herb garden. I grow courgettes and runner beans and french beans as for some reason I always get a glut so there is plenty to freeze (beans freeze fine).

Since we have funds to do so, we have “prepped” by installing solar panels and a good battery, 4 water butts for the garden and switching out to an electric car.

We don’t really have a way of heating our house in winter but we should generate enough power to keep the freezer on.

Yes I’m building up supplies very gradually - a few massive bottles of fresh water; plenty of pasta, lentils, beans, orange squash and coffee, and cans which I cycle through. We have a lot of racking in our garage; I load the spare supplies on little trays and slide them across to the right so they get used up in date order rather than sorting by type of food in which case something can easily get pushed to the back.

I keep a supply of first aid anyway but also make sure we don’t run out of basics like matches, candles, handwash detergent for laundry.

I’m not a prepper at all, but I do tend to have a decent amount of food in the freezer and cupboards as we are rural and have been known to get snowed in. We are rural and have loads of room to grow food if we could be bothered (we can’t). We used to have hens but I got so bored of eggs! We have lots of trees, so there’s always fuel for the fire and we have well water.
But I’m laughing at the government reckoning that they could sort out a shortage/crisis within three days (no reflection on the poster who put this).

I think the three days is just to build some level of resilience into the system. At the moment some people have nothing and shop day to day so three days is better than nothing at all. Those people are currently screwed if we had a sustained power outage lasting for a week or so and are completely reliant on expecting other people to help them out.

Plus hopefully most people who see the advice and do stock up will actually get more than 3 days' worth.

Here is the prepper section if anyone is interested, some useful advice for beginners.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/preppers

@NobodysChildNow I'm very like you I think. We have always had quite a good stock of food, but we also have solar panels and batteries (and I'm intending to get some plug in panels when they are available), 4 water butts, an electric car, candles and matches, a first aid kit which includes steristrips and plenty of dressings and antiseptic, we have fruit trees and I'm just starting to grow vegetables. It may sound silly but I also have quite a few books on foraging and medicinal plants, I gather wild fruit in Autumn and preserve it, and I also have a big bag of salt tucked away.

My thoughts have not been about the kind of thing that could be affecting us now, if Trump's ridiculousness continues, I have always wanted to be prepared in case of war. The kind of war that affects us directly.

I'm not going to get snowed in. It's April in Bedfordshire.

Some of it is just disgust at plastic packaging and air miles. It is a huge incentive to grow things at home. In a major UK supermarket I saw small packets of fresh herbs flown in from locations including countries in South America and Africa. Some were going moldy so would be binned. Really basic things like chives that are so easy to grow.

Red currants on bubble wrap in a plastic box. Expensive, full of pesticides/fungicides and they go off fast. Really easy to grow and heavy cropping.

we have a rolling stockpile of 180-200 tins, 10-15kg each of pasta, rice and flour and bulk loads of baking soda, baking powder and salt in the cupboard under the stairs. I grew up in food poverty so this is standard for me & helps with my food trauma

I agree that three days is nothing really. I suppose in theory if the shit really hit the fan then people could ration their supplies out to last a bit longer.

It has snowed a fair few years over my lifetime where I live in April. We got snowed in over Easter five years ago. I'm not safe from snow until May, not that could tell today. It was a lovely day here

Food shortages in the UK/Europe have often been from sudden panic buying, when people go in and suddenly grab much, much more than usual. If there are fuel restrictions, this is the type of thing that has set off panic buying in the past. Realistically the UK is also fairly vulnerable to foreign supply chain issues as the country does import around half of its food.

I have also lived in a country where there were sometimes big food shocks. It would be triggered by political events (e.g. election violence) or changes in food prices and then sudden stocking up of basics, particularly flour, oil, bottled water and sugar, to the point shelves would be quickly emptied.

I am not in the UK and do live in a remote area. Similar to a small community with no shop in the Welsh borders or Scotland. We have a 10 minute drive to a small shop, another 20 minutes to a larger one, then half an hour beyond that for more. So if there are fuel restrictions I don’t want to be driving around to do the weekly shop. We certainly never shop day by day because of the distances and in the winter do get snowed in for days at a time.

Stocking up sensibly to have a buffer shouldn’t cause a rush of panic buying. I often choose items the supermarket is promoting, so likely has excess supply of. Things like organic passata (we use a lot of it anyway). This week I bought an extra bag of quinoa, as we use it anyway and it had a long shelf life. Some jam with a long shelf life, two bags of red lentils and some coconut milk. I also planted some herbs in a pot where I would usually put flowers. One is a flowering thyme, so it should look nice as well as be practical. If there is fuel rationing and associated panic buying, people who have built up a sensible buffer should reduce strain on the system when there is high demand for fuel and food.

I sound about as rural as you OP.

Costco has told me my membership runs out in June. I'm going to get my normal shop in there in May so I can save a few months on renewing my membership. Also I will save on buying in the food court! That's bring my shop forward a month. I hope society doesn't collapse

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm29m98md2do

If you have got packets of rice and similar look at whether they are fully sealed. The tops of the packets I bought are crimped so they looked sealed, but not stuck together. Will tie them in a bag before they go in a storage box. Mine go in an outbuilding so have to be fully insect proof.

Chatham House has done some interesting work on food security:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/09/how-bolster-food-security-through-global-early-warning-systems/05-conclusion

UK fruit and vegetable imports:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7116398/

At this point I don’t understand why there is not more encouragement for people to grow some fruit, vegetables and herbs. There is plastic grass, plants that are not from the region and require a lot of care, etc.

Schools could have fruit patches. It may show more people just how easy and nice freshly grown fruit is.

Because people will whine that it's harder than buying it in the supermarket.

Growing your own, (including chickens) and preserving your own or seasonal gluts from shops, are both really good ideas.

Personally, I looked (years ago now) at what we normally eat, and have some extra shelf stable versions of those in my cupboards. Plenty of seasonings (that I rotate through as they lose flavour) as well as basics.

If you are very worried, think not just about tins of beans chickpeas lentils etc (that you would use anyway) but maybe also getting 1 bag of dried versions…try these out and see if they work well for you, then maybe get a second bag.

Look around for tins of things you would eat…like where I am, I can find tins of clams, mussels, confit duck, hotdogs, coq au vin, cassoulet, tuna, corned beef etc. some are very expensive, some very cheap. No spam or tinned chicken. I don’t buy all of those, but I have a handful of ones that I will eat set aside. When I use one from my stores (or the week I plan to), I will buy a fresh one to replace it. Or if there’s a special (the French meals sometimes have seasonal specials), I will plan to use my older ones and replenish.

The same with veg. I normally have a lot fresh, some frozen (and some I’ve frozen). But I have a choice of various kinds of beans, peas, carrots , corn, mushrooms, potatoes, asparagus, bean sprouts (expensive!), water chestnuts (very rarely and expensive), olives, ratatouille etc in tins or jars. So again, I keep 5/6 extra tins of veg I will eat and replace them as I use the older ones.

and I usually keep at least 1 spare of each type of carb I use (couple of kinds of rice, couple of kinds of pasta, couscous, bulgar wheat) and also of corn flour, regular flour and other baking items. If you have space, and can store them properly (sealed in food safe containers away from bugs, may need oxygen absorbers, etc), you could have a bit more.

The most important thing is to only store what you and your family will use, store things properly, and rotate to use up older things before they go off (not just ignore the “long term stores” while you do weekly shopping and cooking).

Preppers board here may be useful, and YouTube has some great resources too for storing food properly.