Augason Farms were providing preppers with high-quality emergency provisions since before most people knew what a prepper was. In their nearly half century of operation they have continually improved and refined their product line until today, they offer hundreds of items ranging from individual servings of scrambled eggs to vegetable garden seeds so you can start over in the brave new world of the post apocalyptic future.
Although they sell an array of associated gear such as the aforementioned seeds as well as water storage containers, there is no doubt the company is best known for its incredible selection of disaster-ready food kits and individual menu items. So that is what we are going to focus most of our energy on here.
About Augason Farms
Augason Farms is the brainchild of Utah native Phil Augason who, in 1972, surveyed the emergency food market and found it wanting. He quickly developed the following mission statement that would guide his actions as he set about to fill the urgent void he perceived in American preparedness.
“Produce nutritious, long lasting, high quality emergency foods that people want to eat.”
Five decades later the company he founded is one of the largest and most respected producers of emergency food items in the world. You won’t find many dedicated preppers who haven’t heard of his company, and nearly as many are likely to have some of his products in their emergency stockpile.
A Solid Choice for Most Preppers
The food you choose for your emergency stockpile is up to you, but such choices should be driven by a couple of important criteria: shelf life and desirability. Shelf life because there is no way to know when the next calamity might strike. It could be today or it could be 10 years from now. And taste because, when the chips are down and you’re forced to rely on your emergency food stockpile, the last thing you want is for that food to taste like soggy cardboard.
Augason Farms uses the latest techniques and technology to produce food items that will last up to 30 years on your shelf, and most of their products are at least moderately appealing to the tastebuds. If there’s a downside it’s that, while there are plenty of individual items that will satisfy vegetarians and those looking for gluten-free foods, they don’t have much to offer diabetics.
One more thing: you’ll find a lot of websites selling “Augason Farms 1 Year Food Kits”. But that’s not something you’ll find on the Augason Farms website itself. It seems these “1 year” collections of Augason Farms products are put together by various outside companies and are not actually sanctioned by Augason Farms itself. So just keep that in mind, because if you have a problem with such a kit, and try to get restitution from Augason Farms, you’ll likely be told it’s not their responsibility.
That said, let’s take a look at some of their most popular official food kits.
Augason Farms Deluxe Emergency 30-Day Food Supply 1 Person
FEMA seems to have caught on to the new reality and now suggests you should have at least a 2 weeks supply of emergency food on hand (1). And, frankly, even that seems like a pretty rosy estimate. A better idea is to stock at least a month’s worth of emergency food and the Augason Farms Deluxe Emergency 30-Day Food Supply is a simple and effective way to do that.
The variety here is impressive, so you are not likely to get bored with your emergency menu, and most of the items are reasonably tasty, filling and nutritious. There are 200 servings in all, so if you break it down that’s somewhere between 6 and 7 servings per day. That’s servings, not meals, which means a couple of items each for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Remember, too, that this is a 1-person kit so you’ll need one of these for each person in your household.
The menu items in each 30 day kit include:
- Cheesy broccoli rice
- Creamy potato soup
- Hearty vegetable chicken-flavored soup
- Fettuccine Alfredo
- Spanish rice
- Creamy chicken flavored rice
- Maple brown sugar oatmeal
- Buttermilk pancakes
- Creamy wheat
- Banana chips
- And more…
The kit comes with a 30 day meal planner and suggestions for how to combine the various items to make complete nutritious meals that will provide just over 1,200 calories per day. That’s a little bit light for most adults so you may have to augment with other things like granola bars, noodles and the like.
The shelf life on this kit is 30 years as long as you leave it in a cool dry place. Shelf life on items in the individual pouches drops to 1 year once the pouch is open. So don’t open the pouches to sample the contents unless you want to be replacing the kit a year down the road. Finally, the 5 gallon pail is both watertight to survive flooding and is relatively easy to carry.
Augason Farms 2-Week 1-Person Emergency Food Pail
Augason understands that not everyone has the time to meticulously research and shop for the right kinds of food to fill out an emergency stockpile. So they do the hard work for you. Everything in this kit is carefully considered and paired up with other items that complement it both in taste and nutrient value. You get 140 servings, (with a serving being a single menu item such as soup or bananas), which averages out to 10 servings of reasonably nutritious food every day.
You also get a menu planner, and if you follow it, you should average just over 1,800 calories per day, which is just about right for the average adult woman (2), and maybe a few hundred calories short for the average adult male. But, as with the 30 day kit, you can always augment with power bars, dried noodles and such. Finally, the items in this 2-week kit have a shelf life of 25 years if you keep them stored in a cool, dry place.
The menu items in this 2-week kit include:
- Creamy potato soup
- Spanish rice
- Fettuccine Alfredo
- Cheesy broccoli rice
- Creamy chicken (flavored) rice
- Hearty vegetable chicken (flavored) soup
- Morning Moo’s low fat milk alternative
- Maple brown sugar oatmeal
- Banana chips
If you are looking for an emergency food kit that contains a good balance of flavours, textures and nutrients, the Augason Farms 2-Week pail is about as good as they come. As is the case with all their food pails this one is completely waterproof so if you have to retrieve it from a flooded basement the contents should be fine.
If you are into RVing, having a couple of these along will ensure you’ll always have plenty to eat even when you’re crossing the high plains of Wyoming and there’s nothing around for a hundred miles.
Augason Farms Breakfast & Dinner Variety Pail
This Variety Pail provides 106 servings of soup, pasta, pudding, oatmeal and other breakfast and dinner meals, with a wider selection than you get in some of the other kits. If you follow their menu planner you’ll get around 1,900 calories per day, which is plenty to hold over an average adult in an emergency situation. Remember too you can mix and match, taking only an item or two at a time if you want to stretch things out.
There’s enough food here to hold 1 person over for 8-10 days or 2 adults for half that time. If we had to pick just one type of kit to have in our emergency stockpile it might be this, simply because the variety of pasta dishes is excellent, and the chocolate pudding is a pleasant surprise.
Here are the menu items you will find in the Breakfast & Dinner Variety Pail:
- Creamy potato soup
- Creamy chicken (flavored) rice
- Cheesy broccoli rice
- Cheese powder
- Elbow macaroni
- Chicken (flavored) noodle soup
- Hearty vegetable chicken soup
- Fettuccine Alfredo
- Creamy stroganoff
- Italiano marinara
- Strawberry creamy wheat
- Maple brown sugar oatmeal
- Chocolate pudding
- Morning Moo’s low fat milk alternative
The Breakfast & Dinner Variety Pail comes in a 4 gallon waterproof bucket that will stand up to the worst the elements have to offer. Like the other Augason kits on this list, this one makes a smart addition to the RV or the workshop. The shelf life on the Variety Pail is 25 years if you keep it stored in a cool dry place and you don’t open it. Once you open the bucket, and any of the pouches containing the various packets, shelf life drops to about a year.
72-Hour 1-Person Emergency Food Pail
The last of the Augason Farms food kits we’re looking at is the 72-Hour 1-Person Emergency Food Pail. If you live alone in a hurricane-prone area of the States you’d be wise to have something like this on hand both in your home and at your place of employment at all times, just in case. If you’re going on a road trip into parts unknown it would probably be wise to bring along a couple of these as well.
The 72-Hour Food Pail provides 42 servings, or 14 per day if you go by the recommendations. All you’ll need to take advantage of these items is some water and a camp stove. The variety here is not exactly breathtaking, but it doesn’t have to be. You won’t be eating it every day for a month. It’s just meant to hold you over for a couple of days until the rescue teams get to you, or the utilities come back online.
That said, here are the menu items you’ll find in the 72-Hour Food Pail:
- Creamy chicken flavored rice
- Creamy potato soup
- Hearty vegetable chicken soup
- Maple brown sugar oatmeal
- Banana chips
One thing we’ve noticed about these kits is that the smaller the kit, the larger the daily calorie allotment. This one, for example, provides nearly 2,700 calories per day, which is enough to satisfy the needs of a large, active male. While the first kit we highlighted – Augason Farms Deluxe Emergency 30-Day Food Supply 1 Person – provided less than half that if you went by the recommendations.
As such it’s clear that if you’re a big boy or girl and you want to ensure you get all the calories you need, you’ll have to either augment what comes in the larger duration kits, or you’ll have to buy twice as many tubs and double the amount recommended in the menu planner.
For a complete list of all the Augason Farms best selling individual products, click here.
FAQs
What does Augason Farms Food Taste Like?
Augason Farms will never be mistaken for Katz’s Deli but, for survival food, the taste will compare favorably to the best the sector has to offer. As long as you mix things up from day to day you should have no issues with living on this stuff for a month if need be. Although by the time that month is up you may have a serious hankering for a salad, or anything that puts less emphasis on creaminess.
We didn’t have any real taste issues with any of the dishes we sampled, although some (like the Spanish Rice and Creamy Stroganoff) we found to be better than others. But taste is subjective. The bottom line is that this type of food is not intended to garner 3 Stars from Michelin. What it’s intended to do is deliver nutrient rich calories you can live on during an emergency. If it also happens to taste good, that’s just icing on the cake.
Are Augason Farms Items Difficult to Cook?
Not at all, as long as you have access to water and a heat source. Now granted, those things are often in short supply when the SHTF. But if you’ve done your job as a prepper, you’ve stored plenty of water alongside your food items and you also have a camping stove or two on hand as well as cooking pots and pans and plates to eat off of, even if they’re plastic or paper.
There’s no defrosting with this type of food, only rehydrating in most cases. As such, the majority of these items take less than 20 minutes from opening the pouch to eating. If you find yourself forced to hit the road on foot, you should have a fire-starting kit, cooking pan and water purification tablets, (as well as a water filter) in your bug out bag. With all of those things you should be able to find a way to cook these items. Though you might have to leave the big pail itself behind and carry the pouches loose in your bag.
What About People With Special Dietary Needs?
People with special needs are always going to find disasters more challenging than others (3). That goes for special dietary needs as well. The unfortunate reality is that most survival food is carb-heavy comfort food. There’s lots of creamy sauces and pasta, neither of which are particularly good for diabetics (4). Many types of emergency food are also gluten (5) heavy and most emergency food entrees tend to have a meat component, consisting either of actual meat or a meat broth. So what’s a person with special dietary needs to do?
The good news is that Augason Farms has a gluten-free section on their website where you can purchase individual items that are free of this problematic protein. They also offer a fairly decent variety of vegetarian-friendly menu items. The thing is they don’t have any gluten-free or vegetarian-friendly long-term kits like the ones we profiled above. You’ll have to buy your items individually and mix and match to create an emergency stockpile that suits your dietary needs.
While Augason does a decent job accommodating the needs of vegetarians and those wishing or needing to avoid gluten, diabetics are completely out of luck. Augason doesn’t offer any diabetes-specific menu items, and most of the dishes they do offer are going to send your blood sugars through the roof if you’re not careful.
Are Augason Farms Foods Really Nutritious?
When it comes to Augason Farms you hear words like “nutritious” bandied about quite a bit. But nutrition is a subjective term. That’s because there’s short-term nutrition, which consists of meeting the immediate basic caloric, vitamin and mineral needs of the average person, and then there is long-term nutrition. Long-term nutrition has more to do with making sure you get the correct balance of vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, sodium, fiber and other nutrients your particular body needs to thrive.
Emergency rations like those produced by Augason Farms are designed to keep you alive and provide you with the energy you need to get through the calamity at hand. Once you have, you can go back to worrying about your precise nutritional needs and adjust your diet accordingly. So, to answer the question: Yes, Augason Farms foods are nutritious in the sense that they’ll meet the short-term nutritional needs of the average person.
Where Can I Get Augason Farms Emergency Food?
Prior to 2020 Augason Farms food products, both individual items and food kits, were widely available through online outlets including Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco, Amazon, Sportsman’s Warehouse and a multitude of lower visibility sites.
2020, however, generated an unprecedented demand for emergency foods and emergency food kits. The coronavirus-related lockdowns created millions of new preppers (6) as people who had roundly mocked preppers in the past suddenly saw the light and began stockpiling every kind of emergency ration they could get their hands on, not to mention toilet paper (7).
Those new preppers eventually turned their attention to Augason Farms products and have continued their buying spree even as lockdowns have eased and light has appeared at the end of the tunnel. The result is that many of the retailers who were doing modest business in these food kits before are now completely out of stock. You can still find some individual items on sites like Amazon and Walmart, but for kits, your best bet is to go to the source, the Augason Farms website.
Does Augason Farms Deliver?
They do. Augason Farms will ship anywhere in the lower 48 states (sorry Alaska and Hawaii). As of this writing they waive the shipping charges on orders of more than $200. For any orders less than that shipping is typically very reasonable. Under normal conditions they’ll have your order on its way to you within 3 business days. But with demand still very high for their products it’s possible you will have to wait a week or two (or more) for production to catch up with your order.
The Bottom Line
Augason Farms is and has been a reliable producer of high-quality emergency food supplies. They produce both hundreds of individual menu items and dozens of different emergency food kits designed to provide all the food you need for up to a month at a time. They are a good alternative to MRE’s as well.
There are a lot of companies out there that produce food that can be used during an emergency, and canned foods are always good to have on hand if things get gnarly. But if you don’t have time to build a pantry in your basement (or you don’t have a basement to build a pantry in), Augason Farms emergency food supply kits are a simple, affordable, effective alternative.
