The 30-day pantry shopping list.

— WHAT'S INSIDE

A three-tier build for a household of four.

Quantities are the primer's working numbers, scaled for four people for thirty days. Costs are anchored to the PMBEJD Household Affordability Index, the standing South African reference on basket prices. The list itself is five A4 pages — short enough to print, substantive enough to use over an entire build.

• Tier 1 — the core 30-day pantry. Starches, proteins, fats, salt. The pages that carry most of the calorie weight, with South African brand examples where they help — Tastic, Iwisa, Lucky Star, Bull Brand, Cerebos, Huletts, Anchor. Roughly R2,000 to R3,000.
• Tier 2 — the buffer and variety layer. Dairy, vegetables, preserves and condiments, basic medical. The tier that turns thirty days of stored food into a kitchen rather than a stockpile. Roughly R1,000 to R1,500.
• Tier 3 — the build-out toward 90 days. Preservation supplies, additional spices, morale items (yes, chocolate). The bridge to the next pantry depth. Roughly R500 to R1,000.

Plus a one-paragraph rotation discipline, a category-level what this list deliberately does not include (mylar-bagged staples, freeze-dried buckets, aspirational foods), a closing imperative, and a return-link to the full primer.

— WHAT THIS ISN'T

Not a bunker plan. Not a doomsday list.

We don't recommend mylar-bagged grain for the entry tier, we don't sell freeze-dried buckets, and we don't manufacture urgency. The list anchors on what a normal South African household already buys, in slightly larger pack sizes, rotated through normal cooking. A working 30-day pantry that the household actually eats is meaningfully better than a 90-day pantry that has been bought once and never used — that's the editorial position; the list operationalises it.

— DOWNLOAD

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— THE PUBLICATION

Where this list comes from.

Survival & Prepping is a serious editorial publication on self-reliance, security, off-grid living, homesteading at any scale, and food security. Calm, evidence-led, scoped to the South African household, anti-fearmongering. The 30-day pantry primer is one of our four cornerstones; this shopping list is its companion artifact. Read more about the publication or browse the primer itself.