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Page added on July 9, 2014
Towards an Energy Standard of ‘Local’
A couple Saturdays back a favorite vendor was selling strawberries at my local farmers’ market, and knowing they represented the tail end of the season I indulged in a pint. I polished off the sweet berries while wandering by other booths, checking in with a few farmer friends before buying eggs from one who pasture raises his hens with the utmost care. It was a glorious morning.
For those of us interested in the intricacies of food systems, farmers’ markets are great places to test hypotheses. In The Energetics of Food Distribution I noted the comparative efficiencies associated with shipping larger quantities of food over longer distances. That post didn’t paint small-scale, localized food distribution in a very positive light, and after thinking about how best to characterize efficiency when comparing transport strategies over varying distances I thought it worthwhile to dedicate another post to the issue, this one informed by data collected from several local farmers.
The graph below presents the fuel required to deliver 100 pounds of food for several small farms to my local farmers’ market relative to a semi truck transporting 40,000 pounds of food 3,000 miles to Vermont from the Central Valley of California. Recall that the semi truck in The Energetics of Food Distribution achieved the highest efficiency per unit food delivered for a set transport distance, but of course transport distance isn’t constant when comparing long distance shipments to local vendors. If transport distance shrinks enough, food distributed via less efficient means will end up using less fuel. For most of the vendors I surveyed – I collected information on the weight of food they brought to market, their round-trip travel distance and the fuel efficiency of their truck or van – the amount of fuel used per unit food delivered was lower than the semi from California, sometimes much lower.
In the 1970s a faculty member at the University of Illinois named Bruce Hannon suggested that since energy was a vital production input for goods and services, perhaps we should use embodied energy as a standard of value rather than the good or service’s price in dollars [1]. I’ve always thought this an intriguing idea, one readily adaptable to the context of food distribution. Today the term ‘local’ in local food is defined in many ways by many organizations, although in the United States the 2008 Food, Conservation and Energy Act defines ‘local food’ as any food that travels less than 400 miles to its point of sale or was produced within the state where it’s sold. Rather than relying on such an arbitrary political definition, perhaps we should define ‘local’ as the distance a small farm can transport its products while still requiring less fuel per unit food than a semi truck delivering from afar? This threshold distance will vary depending on where the semi is coming from as well as how heavily loaded the local farmer’s delivery vehicle is, but I think that such a distance can be discerned for most regions and I suspect it will be far less than 400 miles.
In the graph above for instance, the only vendor who required more fuel per 100 pounds of food than the semi from California was a meat vendor who drove 84 miles round-trip, or 42 miles one way. His longer travel distance is compounded by the fact he only brought 150 pounds of meat to sell that day, but he’d need to bring four times as much product just to equal the fuel efficiency achieved by the truck from California and that doesn’t seem likely. The diversified farm that used 0.8 gallons traveled 50 miles round trip, or 25 miles one way, and all other vendors I surveyed had shorter travel distances. The two vegetable farmers traveled only 2.5 miles to the market, and the amount of food they brought to sell on the day I did my survey is far below normal for them as their growing season is just ramping up. Setting aside the variation in the amount of food that vendors bring and the type of food as discussed in More on the Energetics of Food Distribution, it seems that travel distances beyond a 30 mile radius risk not beating the semi’s performance, at least here in Vermont.
In The Energy Cost of Local Food I presented data showing that small-scale, local farms often don’t enjoy an advantage over larger-scale producers in terms of their energy demand per calorie of food produced. It appears that, at least for farms that don’t travel far to deliver their products, the energy use associated with distribution isn’t what’s hurting them. It’s most likely on-farm energy use, which usually requires an energy input-output audit to study with enough detail to craft meaningful efficiency strategies. I think there’s still plenty to learn about the energetics of locally produced food and plenty of room for efficiency gains on and off the farm for those farmers and communities willing to invest in this area, and hope this and similar posts will inspire progress towards this goal.
14 Comments on "Towards an Energy Standard of ‘Local’"
Makati1 on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 7:54 am
Hmmm.
How do the 23,500,000 New Yorkers go “local’?
Or Los Angeles with 18,200,000?
Or even the 5,800,000 of DC?
And on down the list of cities where most Americans live?
This is true of ALL big cities today and that is why they will be the first to go … when energy is too expensive to waste anywhere.
Davy on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 8:01 am
As a grass fed cattle farmer and a biggish gardener I can tell you being connected to the still dominant BAU cost are an issue. It is expensive to have a small cattle operation and a garden with a BAU dominant reality. Just head to Lowes, local nursery, and farmers coop and buy stuff. Buy your seeds, fertilizers, chems, and irrigation supplies…on and on are so expensive and necessary. Then add up those costs and compare to going down the street to Walmart buying your food. BAU local farming still suffers from cost prejudices. The large industrial AG concerns can outbid the small farming concerns hands down. It is the love of the small farmers and the quality of product that makes the difference. Real taste and ripeness as it should be in a seasonal sense. I have wonderful tomatoes coming in now. I just walk into my garden and gorge on deliciousness right from the vine. Melons are coming in and a whole host of other delectables. Would I walk into Walmart and eat a tomato out of season “NO” you have to disguise the Styrofoam taste with other items. Until BAU steady diminishes our small local farms will struggle. It will only be when a whole organic local economy develops that the tools and the market for local, seasonal, and products produced with love will be economic across the board. If we are lucky and BAU sputters and dies slowly this may develop properly. We are at a dangerous point were the BAU economy dominates and this domination is not allowing the investment needed to transition to a local food production economy. If BAU dies quickly it will leave us naked without what is needed to grow enough food for a population exposed to the stresses of a dying BAU. Local food is not about price comparisons to a current BAU steady paradigm. Local foods is a whole new paradigm of living with changed attitudes and lifestyles. FF transport must be greatly reduced in the equation. Industrial AG inputs must be greatly reduced. Marketing with local specialists and a population skilled at local food technics handed down of generations must become the norm. It is about an awakening that will be necessary post oil age.
Davy on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 8:15 am
Mak, when you mention your population numbers you should include the whole of East Asia in a massive population overshoot never before experienced by man. An East Asia with no where near enough food potential post BAU and post globalism exports to provide for even a quarter of that population. Mak, good luck with your coconut and rice rations. You could be eating steak.
Eric Garza on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 10:11 am
Yeah, the cost issue is a huge one. There are many facets of the value of food that don’t necessarily translate well to the energy calculations I do. Freshness is an obvious one, nutrient density another. I talk about this at length in my post Treating Food as an Investment. People have acquired the expectation, at least in the USA, that food should be cheap. Food can be cheap, but not the good food, the food that’s actually worth eating, that can help to ‘immunize’ the human body against chronic degenerative diseases.
J-Gav on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 11:10 am
Davy – Grass-fed cattle, large garden? Good on ya man! And what you say about BAU not favoring small Ag is oh so true – same here in France. Fingers crossed for that ‘awakening.’
I’m also pleased to see that your exchanges with Mak are becoming less acrimonious. Yes, you have a point about Asian population overshoot, but , you know, Mak has been working on his ‘bug-out’ plan for some years now – he’s got some land, a 2 or 3-harvest growing season for fruit and veg, probably some good possibilities for raising chickens and maybe fish-farming, some distance from major urban centers. I don’t reckon he’ll starve if his neighbor-community situation holds up.
At any rate, I have to salute you both (and some others here) for the adaptive efforts you’ve made thus far, even if there will always be more to ‘get done.’
Northwest Resident on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 11:27 am
J-Gav, Davy, Makati1 — A couple that we had over for the weekend — Filipina wife and American husband — own a little land in the Philippines. But also, the gal’s family owns about 5 acres a few miles from Cebu up in the mountains overlooking the ocean. The husband dude left with their son for a 9-month stay (so son can go to Philippine school to maintain his identity) yesterday.
Here’s how they describe where the gal’s family lives on the 5 acres, and where the husband with son will be staying for the next nine months:
Banana, mango and coconut trees — lots of them — bearing fruit year round, no maintenance needed. Two corn crops per year. Lots of chickens running free, feasting on bugs, hiding their eggs in the bushes and trees (the ones that don’t get eaten by big lizards). Year-round waterfall on property coming from natural sprint, fills large reservoir made from bamboo, provides running water to residence. Neighbors are all relatives for acres around. Pigs eat all vegetation, grow fat on their own, no maintenance needed (other than cleaning up their messes). Lots of other fruits growing naturally.
They just sit around on the patio, staring out over the vast ocean, with their food and water provided. No worries at all about raiders from the city — way to far to walk steeply uphill, they’ll die from thirst and/or heat exhaustion before they make it to the top of the mountain. Only worry — volcanic action.
Not a bad place to ride out the coming storm, imo.
Davy on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 1:30 pm
Gav, I want to be friends with Mak but he insists on his daily diet of anti-Americanisms. I have tried to bury the hatchet but he reverts to his same old broken record spiel daily. I agree with many things he says but not the one sided unbalanced attempt to only show the bad side of America and the difficulties ahead. I am forced to remind him of what is going on in Asia. The Asians are in worse shape than North America in regards to population overshoot and food procurement shortfalls with the coming end of BAU. This is the nature of excessive population. The plain fact is too many people are the worst of the worst for survival. Humans are worse than just being a plague species that will scorch the earth of material needed to survive because there is the element of violence from desperate humans to add to the “Hell on wheels” that desperate multitudes of humans are.
NR, I know the Philippians is a paradise. You just look at the geography and topography to know this. I have seen many pictures also. There is still many wonderful places there and wonderful people. I have known some myself. My daughter was raised up in Madrid with her working mom by a Filipino nanny. She was a sweet girl for my daughter. Yet, NR, for many if not most it will be a paradise lost when and if collapse occurs. My point for Mak is, the Philippians will be a very tough place to negotiate a survival in a global collapse for a variety of reasons. There is no way to escape the fact of that small of a landmass cannot support that amount of people without mega issues. IMA a land mass that has been abused and exploited. Mak, wants to paint a picture of the P’s being a sheltered port in the storm of collapse. This could be true other than the severe population overshoot and ecological damage from that overshoot. The P’s are in the cross hairs of AGW also. Some will find cover but only some.
Makati1 on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 8:16 pm
Davy, you don’t have to read my ‘anti-American’ notes. I am not anti, I am just expressing my views of the future there. All of my family, so far, live there and are slowly opening their eyes to reality. A few have even mentioned coming here for a ‘visit’ to ‘check it out’.
Another has taken my thoughts, added some of their own and bailed out of the ‘rat race’ to buy a small farm with their 401k savings, etc, and to prepare. The wife (step sister) is now 50 and in her 4th year of college to be a nurse, a useful occupation no matter what happens. The husband is already a carpenter by trade. The kids are learning farming and animal husbandry and loving it. They are far enough form a big city to be relatively safe.
So, yes, I will keep bringing up the negatives until I cannot access the internet. No one will see them on US MSM sources. All you get there are lies and distorted ‘news’. And, yes, there are some negatives here, but in my judgement, they are not as bad as those in the US. I do not have to worry about freezing. Our farm is surrounded by land owned by the family, as is the case with NR’s friends. That is a typical set up here as the land was divided between families long ago when the land grants were broken up. His description of life here is close to our situation. Not bad, for a ‘retirement’ location.
Makati1 on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 8:44 pm
BTW:
Have you noticed that California, America’s garden, is dying,
Ditto for much of the Midwest. It is only beginning there. Rain is erratic. Aquifers drying up. Rivers that don’t reach the ocean.
Temperatures also erratic, with seasons being confused.
~20% of the US population on tranquilizers to remain sane.
~$70 billion per year for prescription drugs.
An equal or greater amount on illegal drugs and alcohol.
~$3 Trillion per year to maintain a failing life expectancy health care system.
Obesity, illegal drug use, and growing hate between factions.
~250,000,000 guns in the hands of the above.
Millions of new illegal immigrants, from the south, being taken care of by American taxes.
Failing infrastructure, financial system, employment, education, government, etc.
What’s not to like about the US?
Davy on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 9:19 pm
Mak, as long as you bad mouth my country, my family, my land, and our society I will throw your puk back at you. There is something wrong with you, Mak. People like you have issues that bubble up to the surface in their attitudes and conversation. Oh, and your idyllic life in the P’s will not be that way when the masses depart the cities. You are in some kind of drug induce fantasy about your survival chances with so many people crammed in such a small area. The P’s have overpopulated and adjusted to modern life so when SHTF there will be a desperate mass departing the cities to your idyllic countryside in search of all that food you are supposed to be producing.
Makati1 on Wed, 9th Jul 2014 10:35 pm
FYI:
“… the percentage of Americans who believe the United States “stands above all other countries” dropped from 38% in 2011 to 28% in 2014…”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-are-down-on-america-190304928.html
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 3:58 am
Hmmm. Well Davy, they will have to walk about 80 miles thru inhabited areas and over a mountain chain to get to my place. Good luck to them if they can get there. It takes four hours by bus today. I think, maybe a week, if they are in good shape, by foot. Only one road in. No rail. Hundreds of miles by boat, on the Pacific, from any major town. Not like the US grid of flat interstates. Or flat rail beds.
As for ‘modern life’. Yes, obesity is making it’s gluttony felt here among the small percent of wealthier natives. And yes, they will die first. I did not say that there would not be problems, just less problems than most of the US will experience.
Most here do not live a life of ease. They work for about $4,000(PPP) per year and make do with what they have. But, they have enough and are happy, for the most part. Whether they are selling candy and cigarettes along the street or tending their garden and raising pigs and chickens is of little consequence. It’s called survival.
There is no welfare to speak of here so they know they have to survive on their own. I just read that over half of Americans get money from the government to make ends meet. Over 50%! How do you think that will work out when the SHTF and the payments stop? Keep putting Asia down. It makes no difference to me. I live here and know what it is like. And, I am staying.
Jerry L on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 4:14 am
The comparison is very useful but not perfect as I guess the author knows. I think the energy price of the long distance transport is probably underestimated. The food shipped from California to Vermont undoubtedly had to go by smaller vehicles from the farms in California to a central collecting point where they were loaded onto the semi’s. And in Vermont the food would probably be deposited again in a warehouse where it would then be distributed to the local supermarket by smaller vehicles. Is it not possible that the energy use in the first and last steps alone in this transport chain are equal to the local food from farmer to farmers market?
Davy on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 6:54 am
Mak, it is obvious there is an unconscious unease going on with you. It is often called cognitive dissonance. You repeatedly soil the US and pump up the East Asia like an insurance salesman. What are you selling Mak? Normal people here engage in balanced and accurate discussions not traveling salesman talk. Maybe you are unconsciously worried about what is coming and your elaborate plans. I am also wondering what the hell you even do to prepare. I think you just talk about it from that small 5th story condo you live in. I imagine the last time you visited the mountains was a year ago and then it was just a walk around. Mak, I am working all day everyday on my prep work. When you see me post during the day it is as a break from my toil. IMA toil I love but tough work nonetheless. Your bullshit example of how remote your enclave is wishful thinking. That many people on that Island you live on will manage to get to your little perch high in the hills if it has food. It will not be like the motor vehicles all will stop one day. Mak, your repeated bashing of the US is a deeper symptom of something wrong with your psychology. I am not going to lay by and let you bad mouth my life because of your sickness.