Land is so scarce in the UK that waiting lists for allotments can be years, our waiting list was one day because God decided it we were astonished.

Any surplus must be managed in advance with knowledge of blanching/freezing, canning, dehydrating, pickling, chutney making, preserve making.

Allotment holders need these skills.

Learning one at a time is best, this will guard against being overwhelmed with knowledge.

Having said all that, in times of scarcity for all, I fully expect any hard work growing and producing food at the allotment to be ransacked by the ill-prepared.

I will not begrudge them this because they have families too.

Even now the local badgers treat it like a supermarket, but thats what wildlife does, so I will not complain.

If these skills were taught in school - and land allocated, instead of given over to housing invaders - there would be much less stealing of the fruits of others labors either directly, or indirectly... but then, so many have been acclimatized to doing just that, via welfare purchased by taxation - that it is no longer considered stealing... workers become the slaves of non workers.

They have inverted everything.

We purchased 2 acres 7 years ago, and now have a decent plot worked (soil is terrible, rocks and clayso raised beds and sifting), thanks to the chicken and horse contribitions we are now starting to see produce we can store for winter. Last year tomatoes, onions, beans, peppers, potatoes, carrots, melon, strawberries squash.

But it has taken all that time to get it to function half way decently - grasshopper invasions, plagues of beetles, rabbits, mice, gophers, torrential rain, high winds, late frosts, early frosts, been through the mill.

It is a process.

I was rised some years after WWII . So many families had lost their homes. To recover our lessons were about growing food and work diff. materials to learn how to build essential things.

Now its all about the circuses, not the bread.

We are one of the only generations in human history who have no clue how to survive on our own planet, we are the outlier, this is by design, so it is up to us individually to learn these skills.

Once we have these skills, we keep fire, clean water, a shelter from the elements and a safe diet forever in our mind and in our muscles.

Knowledge and skills not only weigh nothing, but they have a negative weight, because the more we know, the less we have to carry.