Aldi has cheap pouches if they have one near you. Really I cannot imagine 3 days of baby food is more than 10$, right? They are like 50 cents a pouch IIRC.
I am not a huge diasater preparedness person (like AT ALL, I probably should be better about it, oh well) but I cannot see complaining that daycare wants 3 days of shelf stable food in case of emergencies when you live in a disaster prone area. And if I was the daycare teachers, I would strongly prefer pouches because they are like 1/10th the work of spoon feeding a baby, and at least where my kids were in daycare, the teacher ratio was 4 infants to 1 adult. So anything that makes feeding less time intensive means my kid gets more attention during play time, nap time, diaper time etc. Especially during an emergency!
FYI, I didn't feed my kids pouches. They didn't even exist (crazy how things change- my kids are only 6 and 8!). But I sure as hell would buy the convenience food for emergencies, as well as for stuff like long car rides, etc. Mine did baby led weaning for the most part.
If 10$ for emergency food bothers you, you better prepare for things to get way worse! The fees, required supplies, extra curricular stuff, etc, is only going to get 10x worse.