The first, essential, step is to move from the city to the countryside, which may be impossible for many as the property market has collapsed. Many in the city, however, have family in a rural area, and this is a good time to at least consolidate contact with them and find some time to assist them in the initiatives discussed. These, however, are not part-time as they involve considerable effort and, where for example elderly parents live in the country while the troubled offspring are in the city, tough decisions may have to be made. If the offspring are unemployed, better by far that they move back to do some useful work at the parental home than waste away in the city.

If one argues that sizeable home gardens and allotments are available in the city also, the dismal news is that a continuing or worsening collapse will result in the immediate theft of growing and grown crops, as food becomes not just a necessity of life but one of the few remaining currencies. There is one important exception to this. In the section on growing food there is information on how intensive potato production can be carried out in specially constructed boxes that can be in any back garden or backyard where there is some sunlight available. These can be hidden or become so common that stealing from them is less likely. Similarly, were we to return to the kind of home growing seen in Ireland during World War Two, virtually every urban garden would have its own vegetables.

Go to Interim short-term stocking

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