Hello Mr. Rawles,
About two years ago, there were letters in SurvivalBlog discussing the virtues of wheat and the deficiencies of potatoes as survival food. The common mood was that the potatoes were too bulky and fragile food needing special conditions for storage and not allowing to keep seeds for two or more years so the single bad year will be disaster.
I live in Russia. Here, there were lots of periods of hunger during first years of Soviet power. The Ukraine, Volga region, and so on. The NKVD reported of mass executions of cannibalism, and deaths due to hunger were commonplace. But this mass starvation was not so severe in Belorussia.
Some time ago I met the explanation of this Belorussian anomaly: While the Ukraine and other hunger regions were growing wheat, Belorussians were growing potatoes. This food was too bulky and fragile and needing special conditions for storage, so it was impossible or at least too expensive for Bolsheviks to transport and store the confiscated food. It was much easier to confiscate wheat.
I believe that future governments will confiscate anything needed for their (not our) survival. Sapienti sat, – Anatoly