Your gangs won't know what to do with the farm which can't grow anything without fossil fuel inputs.  The soil is sterile, it will take several years before live soil can grow crops.  They have no fucking seeds.  All the bunnies in the meadow die.

I have already found something interesting.  Famine as a subject is little studied.  The bulk of research consists of case studies, and a detailed analysis of famine has been done by few people.  There seems to be a hardwired avoidance of the subject.  Famine is not a simple matter of running out of food.  There are many anthropogenic factors.  Easy answers are sought.

Famine is considered, when it is considered at all, to be temporary and a problem that is easily solved with care and concern.  Relief organizations are quick to claim the world produces more food all the time with no end in sight.  There is a complete disconnect from reality.  People in the 1870's knew famine in a way they could not deny.  Modern people have no conception of their experience.

QuoteIt's not easy to forget the deaths of 50 million people, but we have managed it. A global drought in the 1870s caused mass starvation in South America, Africa and Asia, but the event doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

The great famine of the 1870's

I feel like a prospector who has found a new vein of denial.