I need to buy more long-term food! I didn’t mind the potato discussion at all, it’s part of the thread. It will all be about food if the grid goes down.
Start a practice garden now. Just do it.
In the backyard where your neighbors can’t see any failures :P
Moreover, if there’s any landscaping going on near you and you have a place to store them stacked, see if you can score any of the large landscaping pots (the big black plastic ones). You can use those in a sunroom in the winter for fresh stuff to supplement preps with cold sensitive stuff like tomatoes and peppers, and in the rest of the seasons on a driveway or sidewalk where you couldn’t normaly grow stuff. And at least 2 shovels. 2 is one and 1 is none. You could, in a pinch, dig up the median or an empty lot for soil to fill the pots.
You have a 12month growing season. No excuse to starve in your ‘hood. None at all.
The problem will be enough seeds on hand to actually feed people, knowledge on how to save them once the crop is done, and knowledge about growing food itself. Gardening books would help with the latter, and I recommend ‘Seed to Seed’, by Ashworth for a pretty substantive text on seed saving. It even gives information on specific seed saving techniques and planting seasons for different areas of the country. For each plant.
We’re assuming the people have access to some water.