If I were to ask you what the most important crop you can grow is. what would your answer be?

Some might say maze, but maze doesn’t produce much and is quite difficult to grow  in small spaces, if you have a few hectares of land maze isn’t a bad option. It is portable and requires very little preparation to eat, and is very dense,and who can forget the smell of fresh salted popcorn? they need good soil and need a full season to grow properly.

Others could say wheat, but while wheat stores well , it takes quite a bit to prepare, needing to be ground or sprouted before the dense calories can be digested. it also needs loads of space to grow a decent crop, they need good fertilized soil and there are many insects and diseases that attack wheat.

Rice is good  – if you have the space and the water to set up a paddy field, it also requires quite a bit of labor, but it stores well and is very dense in calories.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes are my favorite for survival crops,when it comes to growing potatoes, I would recommend using potato towers, they take up very little space, simplifies drainage ( rotting can be an issue in badly drained soil), let you harvest very simply but pushing over the tower, and frost doesn’t matter as much  and they grow better then most in colder climates.

Potatoes as a crop are pretty bulky a large % being water, but Potatoes can be dehydrated for storage, and kept for longer periods, should that be needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato

“Although potatoes had become widely familiar in Russia by 1800, they were confined to garden plots until the grain failure in 1838–39 persuaded peasants and landlords in central and northern Russia to devote their fallow fields to raising potatoes. Potatoes yielded from two to four times more calories per acre than grain did, and eventually came to dominate the food supply in Eastern Europe. Boiled or baked potatoes were cheaper than rye bread, just as nutritious, and did not require a gristmill for grinding. On the other hand, cash-oriented landlords realized that grain was much easier to ship, store and sell, so both grain and potatoes coexisted.

unlike other crops potatoes are often grown directly from last years crops left overs , no seeds are usually needed.

here are some ideas around setting up potato towers

https://commonsensehome.com/potato-towers/