The Backyard Homestead

For succinct, all-in-one-book advice on upping your food self-sufficiency, it's hard to beat this 2009 manual.

It adequately (though not exhaustively) covers dozens of topics, and includes sample layouts for smaller and larger lot sizes. For anyone not in a NYFC townhouse or loft, there are literally dozens of ways for you to get yourself off dependency to the local supermarket, and producing your own healthier, fresher, and infinitely renewable source of better foods, whether times are good or bad. In fact, even somebody in a loft could raise chickens and rabbits for eggs and meat, and grow quite a container garden. There are few worse things in life than starvation. Especially when you don't have to.

And waiting until they're bad is a lousy way to learn. Possibly in a terminal way, come a severe economic downturn, or worse. There are other books on self-sufficiency, but for bang-for-the-buck, this one's the best of the best.