The amount of emergency food storage you should have on hand depends on your circumstances. The bare minimum is to keep enough non-perishable food to last you 72 hours. But having a more extensive food supply can help to serve as a sort of insurance against longer-lived disasters, such as supply chain interruptions, storms, or hyper-inflation. Keep in mind that the 72-hour minimum is per person in your household. So if you have a household of seven people, you’ll need to store significantly more food than a household of one or two people.

The recommendation from FEMA for water storage is 1 gallon per person per day. You might be thinking, “I don’t drink a gallon of water every day,” and you probably don’t. But you should also store enough water to provide for your basic hygiene needs. FEMA’s recommendation for water storage is a 2-week supply per person. Your water storage will likely end up taking more space than your food storage will.

There are several things you can do to increase the shelf life of your emergency food supply. Firstly, choosing dry foods rather than canned foods will increase the shelf-life of your supply. This is because freeze-dried foods will tend to last the longest. You should also make sure that you store your food supply in an area that is cool and dry and unlikely to experience any kind of flooding or over-humidification.

In an emergency, you will be focused on getting enough macronutrients like carbohydrates, protein, and fats. Carbohydrates will provide you with energy bursts, but protein is vital to help your body avoid malnutrition. Foods like dried beans and rice are easy to store and exceptionally inexpensive, but freeze-dried meats, fruits, and vegetables can all contribute to better nutrition in an emergency. Keep in mind, if you are preparing for an emergency, it can be hard to know for sure how long the crisis will last, so the greater variety you have access to, the better your nutrition will be.

Emergency food storage is just one piece of the emergency preparedness equations. You should also consider other things that would be helpful to have on hand in an emergency. A few things that we recommend storing are:

• 300-500 dollars in cash, small bills. In an emergency, you’ll want to be able to produce exact change whenever possible.
• Knives, cooking utensils, a small stove, and fuel for the stove. Some emergency preparedness sites provide solar-powered stoves.
• Battery operated radio, solar chargers for phones
• 1-2 changes of clothes
• Basic hygiene items (i.e., toothpaste, toothbrush)

This is not a comprehensive list, but it should give you a good idea of where to start while stocking up for an emergency.

You can use your emergency food supply whenever you think it is appropriate. There are no requirements stating that you must only use your food supply in the case of a hurricane or weather-related emergency. It may also be helpful in the case of job loss, pandemic, economic downturn, or other non-weather emergencies.