freeze dried food / canning

[ErikEst]

(18 November 2012, 15:42)Highlander Wrote: Thank you I-K-E,.. in fact it was watching the `Domesday Prepers` programs on the telly that start us thinking about this,...and the fact that they canned so many different things, as opposed to what we might preserve, which is a different thing, preserving [ as we know it] is more for fruit.
Canning is also a bit more intense, because I think there is particular temperatures involved with canning, but if we can find out the `ins and outs` then we can can almost any foods

actually i was wondering too about those freeze dried food in the preppers tv shows. as i understand freeze drying is some kind of industrial dehydration process with consecutive preservation in the inert gas atmosphere.
at home you can dry fruits, mushrooms, vegetables and may be salted fish.
but you can not can for example meat products without the salt or vinegar at home, and marinated or salted food still contains lot of water, so it would be heavier and take more space in the storage.
so my question is: is freeze dried food on sale only in states or it is usual commodity for example in catering business all over the world?
and what is the storage life for this kind of preserves?