Food: Zero to Full Competency

Curious how Tier, Stage, and Phase relate? See the Glossary.

Why This Addendum Exists

Chapter 3 tells you what to have and do at each tier of a disruption. It does not tell you how to actually get good at food preservation or growing your own food if you’re starting from zero. This addendum is a skill-building curriculum for exactly that: a structured path from no relevant knowledge to genuine, tested competency in Food, built from real Utah programs, certifications, and hands-on practice, not just reading lists.

It’s organized by skill stage, not by disaster duration, because building competency isn’t duration-bound the way disaster response is. You can be at Stage 3 in food preservation and Stage 1 in foraging at the same time; that’s normal and expected. Move through each stage at whatever pace your life allows, and treat the self-check at the end of each stage as the actual gate, not the time spent.

Four stages: Foundations (basic safe practice), Applied Practice (hands-on competence), Self-Sufficiency (independent, resilient skill), and Mastery & Teaching (able to teach others and operate at community scale). Each stage covers two sub-skill tracks that run in parallel: food preservation and storage, and food production.

Stage 1: Foundations (Awareness)

Goal: know the core safety facts well enough to not hurt yourself or your household, and understand the landscape of what’s ahead. This stage is readable in a weekend; it’s meant to be the floor everyone in the household clears quickly, not a deep skill.

Core Knowledge

The core food-safety concept at this stage is the “danger zone”: bacteria multiply fastest between 40°F and 140°F, which is why the 2-hour rule (4-hour rule above 90°F ambient) for perishable food exists. The second core concept is basic nutrition math: roughly 2,000 kcal per person per day as a baseline (more for children, nursing mothers, larger adults, or anyone doing physical labor), covered in Chapter 3’s Tier 1. At this stage, you don’t need to know how to preserve food yet; you need to know how to keep what you already have safe, and roughly how much you’ll actually need to store or produce.

Stage 1 Learning Path

Stage 1 Practice Exercises

• Read one full NCHFP guide section: Pick one preservation method you don’t currently use (canning, dehydrating, or freezing) and read its full NCHFP guide section, not just a summary.

• Practice the audit method: Do a real pantry audit using Chapter 3’s calorie-conversion method (not an estimate) and know your household’s actual day count against the 14-day target before moving on.

Stage 2: Applied Practice (Competent)

Goal: move from knowing the theory to having actually done it, under real (if low-stakes) conditions. This stage is hands-on by design; reading about canning is not the same skill as having canned. Expect this stage to take a few months, mostly gated by class schedules rather than effort.

Applied Practice

• Take a hands-on preservation class: USU Extension’s Home Food Preservation Series (canning and dehydrating, roughly $6/class) is specifically designed as a low-cost, low-commitment entry point. Attend at least two sessions covering different methods. See the Food Preservation skill guide for tested processing times and methods to practice against.

• Can or dehydrate a real batch: Complete one full preservation run start to finish, following a tested NCHFP recipe exactly (not an heirloom family recipe with unverified processing times), and record what you’d do differently next time.

• Build a real FIFO rotation: Set up and actually use a first-in-first-out rotation system for your stored food for at least one full month, not just as a one-time organizing exercise.

• Build a bulk long-term supply hands-on: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates Home Storage Centers open to the public (not just members) along the Wasatch Front, selling bulk long-term staples (wheat, rice, beans, oats, powdered milk) at low cost; several locations let you actually operate the canning/sealing equipment yourself to package your own #10 cans. This is genuinely hands-on bulk storage practice, not just an online order. See the Sealing Bulk Food for Long-Term Storage skill guide for how to package and seal what you buy.

Stage 2 Learning Path

Stage 3: Self-Sufficiency (Proficient)

Goal: genuine independence from the supply chain for meaningful stretches of time, the actual skill level Chapter 3’s Tier 3 assumes a household has. This stage is a real commitment, typically a full growing season plus a multi-week course sequence, and produces skills that don’t degrade quickly once built.

Self-Sufficiency

• Complete a real preservation certification: USU Extension’s Master Food Preserver course (hands-on workshops, based in Salt Lake City) goes well beyond the Stage 2 classes into a genuine, in-depth certification covering the full range of preservation science.

• Complete a real production certification: USU Extension’s Master Gardener Program is 13–14 weeks of college-level lecture and hands-on training (botany, soils, irrigation, pest management, and more), offered at 13 locations across Utah, plus a 40-hour volunteer service requirement to receive the certificate.

• Learn regional wild foods: Utah-specific foraging instruction (for example, Edible Wilds LLC’s classes and book, or Wild Utah Edibles’ guided tours) teaches identification of genuinely local wild edible plants; this is a real skill with real poisoning risk if self-taught from a generic national guide that doesn’t account for regional look-alikes. See the Foraging Wild Edibles Basics skill guide for the specific deadly look-alikes worth knowing before any class, not as a substitute for one.

• Run a real growing season: Grow, harvest, and preserve at least one meaningful crop from your own property through a complete season; this is the step that actually tests whether the Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver knowledge holds up under real conditions.

• Build real no-fuel cooking capability: A genuinely independent food system includes a way to cook that doesn’t draw down your fuel or power reserves; the Solar Cooking skill guide covers box, panel, and parabolic designs and the real conditions each one needs.

• Build real no-power cold storage capability: Canning and dehydrating aren’t the only preservation methods; root cellaring and evaporative cooling extend produce life without processing it at all, and without power. See the Improvised Cold Storage skill guide for real crop-by-crop targets and four buildable methods.

Additional Food Production Tracks (Situational)

The three tracks below are genuinely valuable Stage 3 skills, but unlike gardening and preservation, they’re not universal: legal restrictions, property size, dietary preference, and local ordinance all determine whether they’re realistic for a given household. Treat them as worth pursuing if they fit your situation, not as a gate everyone needs to clear.

• Animal protein through hunting and fishing: Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) requires a hunter education course to obtain a hunting license if you were born after December 31, 1965; the course (about $12, roughly 4–6 hours online plus a required field day with a written test and live-fire exercise) covers firearm safety, wildlife management, and survival skills directly relevant to food production self-sufficiency. A fishing license is required at age 12+ (free under 12), and Utah DWR’s “Fishing for Beginners” resources are a genuine, low-barrier entry point if hunting isn’t the right fit. Build this skill assuming it gets harder to rely on the longer a disruption lasts, not easier: real famines and wartime shortages consistently show wild game and fish near population centers depleted by competing demand within months, so a household planning on hunting or fishing as a real Stage 3 food source should also have Chapter 8’s Tier 4 community-governance skills, the same ones that cover shared resource disputes generally, not just security. See the Hunting, Trapping & Field Dressing Basics skill guide for the field-dressing side of this.

• Small livestock: backyard poultry: Chapter 3’s Tier 3 explicitly names small livestock as part of self-sufficient food production; backyard chickens are the most accessible version for most Wasatch Front properties. Before acquiring birds, check your specific city or county ordinance: flock size limits, rooster restrictions, and whether poultry is permitted at all vary significantly by jurisdiction (Utah Code § 10-8-59 leaves this to local land-use codes, so there’s no statewide default). USU Extension maintains a dedicated poultry specialist and fact sheets specifically for science-based backyard flock guidance. See the Backyard Poultry & Small Livestock Basics skill guide for real coop space and predator-proofing specs.

• Seed saving and seed libraries: Buying starts or seed packets every season is a real dependency on the supply chain; saving your own seed from a successful harvest closes that gap. Utah has a genuine, free seed library network (Salt Lake City Public Library, Provo Library, University of Utah, and others), and USU Extension runs seed-saving classes and publishes a seed-saving guide. Note that open-pollinated varieties save true to type; hybrid varieties generally don’t, so which seed you save matters as much as whether you save it. The What to Grow skill guide covers the actual technique: which crops are easy versus hard to save true seed from, real isolation distances, and how to store what you save so it’s still viable years later.

Stage 3 Learning Path

Stage 4: Mastery & Teaching (Expert)

Goal: the ability to teach others reliably, operate at a scale beyond your own household, and hold professional-level credentials where they exist. This is the stage Chapter 3’s Tier 4 (community-scale, shared resources) actually depends on: someone has to be capable enough to lead it. This stage is ongoing rather than something you finish.

Teaching & Certification

• Volunteer as an instructor: Both the Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver programs are built around graduates teaching the next cohort or the public; this volunteer-teaching requirement is itself the mechanism that turns personal competency into community capability.

• Pursue a professional food safety credential: USU Extension’s Food Safety Managers Certificate Program is a real, professional-level credential (the kind required of commercial food service managers) and is a legitimate path if you want to run community-scale food operations (a shared kitchen, a food pantry, a community canning program) credibly and safely.

Community-Scale Practice

• Design for a group, not a household: Take what you’ve built at Stage 3 (a garden, a preservation routine) and scope out what it would take to run the same thing at 5x or 10x the household scale; the constraints are different (labor coordination, equipment sharing, storage logistics), not just “more of the same.”

• Build the roster and cache described in Chapter 3’s Tier 4: Chapter 3 calls for a community seed bank, shared production tools, and a skills roster; Stage 4 is where you’re the person capable of stocking, maintaining, or teaching from that roster rather than just listing it as a goal.

• Mentor, don’t just instruct: A one-time class teaches a technique; ongoing mentorship (checking in on someone’s first canning batch, walking a neighbor’s garden with them mid-season) is what actually transfers competency reliably. Build at least one real mentoring relationship, not just a teaching credential.

Stage 4 Learning Path

A Suggested Learning Sequence

The two tracks (preservation, production) don’t have to move at the same pace, and most households will naturally be further along in one than the other. As a rough guide, not a requirement:

• Weeks 1–2: Stage 1 across both tracks: read the core references, do the pantry audit, pick a preservation method to focus on first.

• Months 1–4: Stage 2: take a first hands-on class, run one full preservation cycle.

• One growing season plus a course cycle (roughly 6–14 months): Stage 3: enroll in Master Food Preserver and/or Master Gardener, run a full season of production and preservation.

• Ongoing: Stage 4: move into a volunteer-instructor role, consider a professional credential if your household’s Tier 4 plan calls for it, and start mentoring specific people rather than just taking more classes.

At a Glance: Food Deep Dive

A single-page reference for planning purposes. This does not replace the detailed guidance above; use it to see how the four stages scale, and cross-reference against Chapter 3’s tiers, which describe what a household needs to have and do rather than how skilled it needs to be.