I am not sure that I completely understand your premise. Products are generally available during a depression. The best financial course of action today is to save money… unless the dollar becomes devalued too, which will make imports more expensive.

In terms of finances, doing things to lowering your fixed monthly bills is always a good idea - looming depression or otherwise. Since you’re in Texas and you’re all engineers, perhaps look into solar and/or battery storage for electricity? Do the math first obviously. A small(er) garden can help save some $$ but you have to be careful how much you spend on it.

If you’re coming from the perspective of wanting to provide value to your family, simply helping out around the house (cooking, cleaning, etc) and taking on projects you’ve all been putting off will probably go a long way. Your labor might not be cheaper than a builder’s now, but… Doing home repair/improvements, landscaping, building an out-building, building some outdoor shade, etc could be really appreciated.

If you’re looking to earn some $$, farming seems fairly depression proof, but should a depression hit people won’t be buying cash crops. Relative to labor input farming will likely not be very lucrative. Starting a side hustle/business might be a better option. It seems like the demand for repairing basically everything would go up. People will also be looking for cheap local distractions.

The YOLO option is to buy a ton of imports from a country you expect will have their currency strengthen relative to the dollar and then sell those items once the cost of them goes up, but this sounds super risky.

Several people mentioned chickens but I think bees are also a good choice, especially if you are growing food. Honey is already an expensive item, and I feel like you could barter with it pretty easily since everyone else will have chickens. Sweet treats during a depression are hard to come by.

If it’s Venezuala-ish economic collapse, fertiliser will probably still be available. Heck, with thorough composting need for that is pretty reduced, even. My buying advice leans towards unusual or higher-tech things as opposed to bulk products.

If it’s war/apocalypse/disaster, a few acres will help or could even feed a whole person, depending on where in the US. A mix of things is advisable, maybe including animals, since it’s less likely everything fails at once. Medicine, fuel, water treatment supplies, batteries and ammunition are also recommended bulk items. Water itself if you’re in an arid place, and nonperishable food including cooking oil in case your minifarm has problems.

If it’s a recession like 2008, just get your finances in order and an emergency fund. Life will go on.

I wouldn’t.

Depressions aren’t a zombie invasion or a nuclear war. They’re a reduction in economic activity. Some percentage of people get laid off, are out of work for a time.

If you get laid off, you’re probably going to want a financial buffer, and buying stuff ahead of time is most likely not a great idea. Better to have the buffer.

If you don’t get laid off, not likely a lot you can do to prepare.

I’d also add that while depressions affect a large area, it’s entirely possible for particular areas to see economic decline even if the country as a whole is seeing rising growth. Like, say a major employer in a small town goes out of business.

I’ll share what I have done.

I follow a rule of 3. 3 sources for sustaining resources.

water:

1. I keep at least a months worth of bottled water for my family. I routinely cycle through it to ensure it’s always new.
2. water treatment to consume harvested water from local ponds. I have a 50 gallon drum used to store water for my garden that would be used to store non-potable water for filtering and treatment. using the water bottles from 1 would be used to store potable water.
3. water filters like life straws. if we have to bugout or are desperate, these filters are the last ditch effort to get enough water.

food:

1. currently have three months of canned food that we cycle through and replace when needed. fruits, veg, even meat. longer term stored foods with 15-40 year shelf life are also kept
2. currently have a 1600 sqft garden that we manage. we eat from it year round and preserve what we can. pickling, canning, freezing, drying.
3. I have the tools and experience for hunting. I live outside of town so traveling for hunting isn’t unreasonable.

electricity:

1. grid power, I live near some emergency services so my power is always the last to go out.
2. I have a generator that can power my whole house (tested). it runs on LP, NG, and regular fuel. I keep three LP tanks around just in case but it’s setup for a direct line to my NG line. I run it once a year just to make sure it’s still in working order.
3. solar panels / battery for small items like phones, laptop/tablets, radios, and lights.

protection:

1. I have several guns. some for hunting, some for defense. last I checked I’ve got around 10k rounds of ammo that should last me awhile.
2. I have several bows, hunting mostly but could be used in a pinch. also slingshots for small game and deterrent.
3. I used to collect knives and swords. dozens of knives, sharp as the day they were sold. a couple full tang swords that could at least scare someone away.
4. bonus - your mind is the most dangerous weapon you have. read things you’re told not to. experiment with things you’re told not to. gain knowledge and experience you’re not supposed to have. be the danger, but don’t be an idiot.

things I’ve learned:

• establish your garden now. if you wait until then, you’re going to gamble with your life. an established garden produces. a new garden grows.
• have a gameplan of when you need to abandon everything. think it through, step by step, day by day. everything you have accumulated is not worth your life.
• create marketable skills. carpentry, agriculture, engineering, medical, etc. if you have a skill you can trade with it.

these are just some ideas. make a plan that works for you.

If you stock up on food buy things that Will increase in bartering value and that hold value. Like jerkey. Also long shelf life items like beans and rice. Plant an Apple tree, get some chickens, learn to plant,harvest and store potatoes etc

Rice and beans

In terms of fertilizer, maybe get chickens. You can feed them basically any table scraps, you get free eggs, and you can occasionally shovel out their shit for fertilizer

I won’t tell you what to stock up on because other than food items that are difficult to grow in large enough quantities for yourself, I’m not sure that’s the right question for someone with access to a bit of land. What I would want to do in your position is start setting up systems for reusing what you have efficiently, and cutting down on future costs, since that’s where you’ll make the biggest impact. I’ve been on the brink of unstable for a very long time, and I’ve become very good at not falling over the edge, so this advice comes from there. Nothing you can stock up on will last long enough in useable condition to make a really substantial difference long term. Except maybe cinder blocks and bricks if you are handy enough to build stuff, and canning jar lids. Maybe a nice set of rechargeable tools, a bunch of fasteners, stuff like that.

Instead of buying fertilizer, chickens or quail and various kinds of compost are great options. You can make a couple different compost containers/piles using things birds can’t eat for worms and soldier fly larva, the birds love them and they are super healthy foods. Add the dirty bird bedding to the compost once you’ve let the birds eat the larva, let sit for a bit so it’s not so “hot” and till into garden soil. The bird-poo-rich compost is just amazing for plants. Worm compost runoff liquid (because it is done in containers typically), aka worm tea, is more of a potent liquid fertilizer you can use throughout the season as needed, so they work well together, and reduce your waste. Worm castings are a super great soil addition when you till or top-dress. Then you can supply eggs and fishing worms to people for income if you want. Plus chickens can eat most garden scraps, like leaves and spent flowers, so literally free food!

Look into permaculture plants that you can plant once and harvest for years to come with no effort, and give them the absolute best planting conditions you can manage based on whatever they need. Fruit trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes are great, but if you are willing to expand your horizons and plan ahead for maintaining them, there are plants that can be eaten in a variety of ways including as salad greens, and will come back for 2-20+ years. I would suggest to focus your efforts very heavily on stuff that will continue to bear food long term because it’s no effort for all that stuff, so you can put that effort into a garden of single season crops that round out your needs rather than struggling at addressing all of them. Plus you can plant smaller things like rhubarb, mint, chives, asparagus, strawberries, etc. around the footprint of the bigger stuff and everything is happier with the reduced direct sun (“full sun” doesn’t mean all day). A big key here is variety. You want as many different permaculture plants as possible growing (tho keep in mind cross-pollination requirements for things like apples and plums that need a bloom buddy) because if the local climate shifts and something fails, you are more likely to have things that survive and are already producing, no down time while you replace what failed, and that’s huge if you are relying on it for sustenance or income. You’d probably be really surprised at the sheer variety of things you can get to grow even in the frigid north. That’s what you want to stock up on now: permaculture plants. Seeds or cuttings or grafts, whatever you need get those going.

Set up rain barrels or create a pond that you can use for watering. Maybe set up an automatic drip irrigation system from it to reduce your effort and ensure consistency. If you want you can grow aquatic foods in a small pond or rain barrel, and/or raise fish if you have enough space. If you do rain barrels and they aren’t huge, you can put guppies in them seasonally, which will reduce mosquitos and produce a lot of guppies (they typically do not eat their own young) which can be harvested to feed to chickens or fish (like perch) as well.

Consider building a well-vented greenhouse to extend your growing window and help prevent weather related growing problems with more sensitive plants. If you live somewhere with cold winters, and you can source large used barrels (and if you live rural you probably can), you can fill them with water, paint them black and place them somewhere in the greenhouse that gets sun, and use them as freeze-resistance for your plants. Sometimes this is enough, if you build it right, to keep plants growing year round even up in Canada.

If you can, build a root cellar somewhere to store whatever you manage to grow, and learn how, and how long, to store each crop. It doesn’t have to be huge, but if you lose electric, it’ll still work when a fridge won’t. This doesn’t have to be a new space if you don’t want to build something and bury it, so if you have a weird empty basement room you can convert, or a crawl space or something, that might be plenty. I use a weird big cabinet the stairs down to my basement are built around and part of, because it’s otherwise a huge empty cold waste of space that’s inconvenient to access, with the door being on the stairs. A dark place that stays consistently cool and humid, but not stagnant, will keep produce good for considerably longer than refrigeration or sitting at room temp. If you commit enough space to it, you can use it to store home-canned goods (like in jars) in the dark to prevent light-related degradation.

If you don’t have one, invest in a large pressure canner, and as many jars as you can get your grubby mitts on for cheap (or free if you know people who throw out canning jars), and learn to use it. Find approved canning recipes, and save them somewhere offline. (the USDA actually has a ton of tested and safety-approved recipes for home canning, or you might be able to find books at local thrift shops. It’s wild what you can preserve with a bit of forethought!).

If you don’t already have solar, consider looking into it. It’s an upfront cost, yes, but it will save you down the line, especially if the grid, or the value of money, goes wonky. You can buy everything used from solar farms for well cheaper than new retail prices, and have someone install them or do it yourself if you feel comfortable, but then have it inspected and hooked up by a professional. The panels and stuff coming from solar farms still have most of their effective life left, they just cycle them out on a schedule to produce peak energy. If you go this route, make sure you have a way to disconnect from the grid if it goes down so you can continue using your solar. That might be standard, I’m not really sure. If you think inflation will make your savings worth less than not paying for that ongoing bill, it might be worth it. Keep in mind that you can always add more later if you need to, so don’t think you need a $20k system upfront. You might be good with $5-10k, which buys you a LOT of used solar capacity if you have space for it.

saving as much as we can

an economic depression is going to make your spending power tank. don’t save all of your money, invest it in things that will allow you to support your well-being when things get hard. I don’t mean in stocks or whatever, I mean in things like a garden to grow as much food as possible. water filtration like a Katadyn hand pump water filter. solar panels large enough to charge your small electronics like a phone at least, and big enough to power things like your lights if you can afford it. hand tools for repairs around the house. a bidet so you don’t ever need toilet paper again. whatever you need to route your rain gutters into tanks to store water for drinking or watering plants.

you know, practical things that will help you. if you do save money, keep it hidden away in a fireproof safe inside your walls. money saved won’t do much if it’s in a bank that might decide not to let you withdraw it during a recession. I’m not saying you should go crazy and become a prepper, but taking a few steps to decrease your reliance on a functioning society will make things easier when times get hard.

Potatoes amd beans are easy to grow. Try it out.

Start giving your neoghbors cookies and gettingbto knowvthem. Your community is your best lifeline.

Dried bean mixes and rice can be kept in sealed containers in a cold, dark place for upwards of 5+ years. They are super cheap to buy in bulk. It’s about as close to nutritionally complete as you can get, and only requires boiling water to cook. Dried beans also frequently can be rewetted and sprouted, at least for the first couple years.
Gardening is nice but fresh veggies don’t keep through the dark of winter.

I am especially fond of the soup mixes that North Bay Trading sells. It’s about 4-7$ a pound depending on how much you buy, but it keeps for basically forever, and each pound of beans makes multiple gallons of awesome tasting soup. Sautee up your meat of choice and add it in, it’s great and will not leave you depressed.

With a few acres at your disposal, you have a lot more options. This is drifting out of bulk item territory but it counts.

Learn how to can and get the bulk supplies necessary for it- it doesn’t take much at all to get started. If you are going to have to start living off the land more, canning is critical to surviving winter without suffering from malnutrition. Plus, canned goods are a highly prized barter item.

Get chickens. Chickens are easy to keep, need little space, can be allowed to free-roam around your few acres, and are a great natural pest control. They auto fertilize and aerate your garden, eggs are nutritionally dense for you and can be sold, and chicken meat is a solid protein source. They grow to maturity extremely fast (<6mo) so can produce very quickly from even a small originating flock.

Tools and mechanical knowledge are key. When push comes to shove in rural areas you are going to need to fix all of your own stuff to keep things like electricity, fresh water, heating, your road vehicle, and your farm implements all running. You can outfit yourself with some pretty damn good hand tools at harbor freight for <$150 that will be enough to disassemble an engine, stove, or other house appliance if needed. Start watching youtube videos on basic vehicle/tractor and house appliance maintenance, take notes. Find repair manuals for stuff you own, and buy paper copies of them.

Start collecting spare parts like fuses, electrical wire, common replacement parts for around the house stuff, tractor and car consumables like spark plugs, oil, etc. You don’t realize how dependent you are on the modern industrial supply chain until it is abruptly cut off, and everything around you just stops working in less than 6 months. This won’t last forever of course, but it will least extend the period you can operate normally.

If you have a groundwater well pump on the property and not a public water utility, find an alternative way to get water out of it. Clean water is the key to all life, if you can keep water flowing, you can make everything else work. Grid power can disappear at any time and may or may not ever be restored, so an electric well pump may not be useful. Have someone outfit the well head with a manual hand pump if the well is shallow enough to support it, or have a way to power or replace the electric well pump with a generator or car power.

If you’re thinking about growing anything start considering:

• Your goals. Are you looking to sell some/all of your crop? Is this meant for sustince? A supplement to groceries?
• Land management. Do you want to let fields go fallow? Rotate crops? Grow cover and/or summer/winter crops? Till or no till?
• Equipment. Do you need to buy anything to help with maintenance, plowing, planting, harvestint, or processing the harvest?
• What you intend to grow. Do you want a few main crops? A ton of verity? Do you care about how easy it is to store? How do you want to balance calory density, nutrition, and flavor? Are you looking for single year or multi-year crops?
• What grows in your zone?
• Layout. How are you going to layout the planting area(s)? Do you need to worry about fencing? How about irrigation? Do you care about containing crops and/or weeds?
• Required inputs. Things like water, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, etc. You will want pest and fungicides even if you’re going organic

Note that all of the above are strongly interrelated.

We have a decent size fruit/veg garden that’s mostly annuals. Despite having done this for 10 years, the last thing on my mind for the next season is whether or not I should buy fertilizer now.

A final suggestion: go in open eyed to the amount of effort this will take. The amount of labor required by our garden follows a boom and bust cycle. On some weeks I’m out there once for an hour. On other weeks I’m out there multiple times a week. If you’re not able to devote continual time to the garden then your crops, and yeilds, will suffer. Harvesting and processing is time consuming and is greatly influenced by what you grow. Doing something with perishable crops before they go bad can also be a challenge. Even with 40 sq ft of raspberries our family of four can’t keep up so we have to jam/can/freeze them or turn them into compost. The same is true of tomatoes and a bunch of other produce - especially if you plant crops that actually taste good and you pick them when ripe.

Hand crank radio, candles, canned goods, a water catch/storage system for rainwater, camp stove + propane. If you’re growing your own stuff, learn to can and preserve food, so jars, lids, and supplies for that. SEEDS. If the world goes to shit, having a seed library will be important. Stock up on first aid, medical supplies, and antibiotics. That shit will be worth its weight in gold in a world/society ending scenario. Consider getting chickens and a coop, now you have fresh eggs, creatures that can eat most table scraps, and fertilizer production. Solar panels and batteries might be better in an extended blackout period if diesel and other fuel becomes hard to find in an a world ending scenario. Guns, to protect all your shit from desperate looters, and to hunt. Camp toilets, or maybe build a privy; during a world ending scenario there will be no running water. Stock up on firewood too. Reference books; in the end times there will be no internet or how to guides. So you want reference books for edible plants in your area, using traps/snares, maps/atlases, medicinal plants, ect.

For food: Salt, rice, pasta, canned tomatos.

Medical: Whatever you need in medication, antibiotics, bandages/first aid materials.

Other: Hand cranked power supply (for radio and other USB devices), grain mill, seeds, sturdy tools and means to take care of them.