[SoothSayer]

The bulk of the UK's population gets its food etc from just 1500 stores - all supermarkets.

Would it be efficient to maintain these supermarkets (perhaps making sure thay all have good thermal insulation etc) - or would replacing them by many, many more small local stores all of which need heating, lighting and transport be more energy efficient?

I suspect that "economies of scale" might suggest that the supermarket system is in fact overall the most energy efficient route to keep the bulk of the population fed.

Opinions?

[Chicken_Little]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', 'T')he bulk of the UK's population gets its food etc from just 1500 stores - all supermarkets.

Would it be efficient to maintain these supermarkets (perhaps making sure thay all have good thermal insulation etc) - or would replacing them by many, many more small local stores all of which need heating, lighting and transport be more energy efficient?

I suspect that "economies of scale" might suggest that the supermarket system is in fact overall the most energy efficient route to keep the bulk of the population fed.

Opinions?

[SoothSayer]

Almost nothing at all will work without fossil fuels.

However say we had a 50% shortfall ... would the supermarket system be the optimal use of what fuel we had?

[Ludi]

Yes, they could be more efficient, I think, but not as useful for the population, who will have to pool their resources to be able to get to these few stores.

I go back and forth on this one. I'm very much in favor of local economies, but can see the difficulty of supporting many smaller stores, which are likely to just get cut off from supplies, whereas the megastores will have the financial resources to continue (as they are doing now, having put most smaller stores out of business).

[Wildwell]

Is having everything in one place efficient? Yes.

However, Supermarkets in their present form are not especially efficient in terms of fossil fuels.

1. Large organisations tend to drive the prices down so much that it bankrupts smaller scale local industry and agriculture. Hence, why farmers have been driven to the point of bankruptcy and local production has stalled in favour of very large scale ‘big box’ industrial methods of production, distribution and retailing. The trucker’s upset over high fuel prices is much to do supermarkets driving down prices. It's now cheaper to use cheap East European labour to ship in milk from the Ukraine rather than farm it and bring it up by truck or train from Devon.
2. Food miles: This isn’t all down to supermarkets, but because they can buy in bulk from distant suppliers and transport is historically very cheap (no thanks to cheap fossil fuels) apples tend to come from the other side of the world, rather than the situation in the 1950s when they were picked in Cambridgeshire, loading onto a tramway, taken to a big marshalling yard and hooked up unto the next mixed steam powered freight train to London.
3. They tend to position themselves for ‘out of town’ shopping, meaning people need cars to get there. Obviously lifestyles have changed since the 1950s, with many more women going out to work. The supermarket is seen by most as the ideal once or twice ‘bulk buy’ and ship it back by car after work, rather than ladies who used to walk around local shops and queue at the local butchers, bakers, greengrocers, fishmongers, ironmongers and so on and spend the whole day doing that and bringing up children, as well as doing household chores that have now been mechanised – washing clothes etc.


So they answer is they are very cost efficient but very fuel inefficient.

[Mechler]

The most efficient system would be local farmers growing food for local grocery stores. Of course, this is not realistic with today's population and lack of agricultural land (in most places). But there must be places where this is the system - anyone have examples?

I think if we had a 50% reduction in oil, I'd prefer to live in a place that at least had the capacity to return to a localized system. For many places that won't be an option.

To return to your original question, though, I guess it depends on what takes more energy. Either the food gets to the people or the people get to the food. Neither are particularly efficient without good mass transit. And then there is the whole issue of the mega-farms that supply the mega-supermarkets. Is that efficient?

Bottom line: I think we're screwed.

[Ludi]

I agree local agriculture and local stores would be the most efficient in an ideal situation, which we should be moving toward. But I tend to think the move will be in the opposite direction, with more centralization to maximize the benefits of megastores and the current infrastructure. How to counteract this, I'm not sure, except to encourage everyone to support or start their own local food production and sales industry.

[bonjaski]

its not difficult increase the efficiency for example for walmart, or mc donalds.

This are big companies and have the resources to switch to alternatives when they pay back.

A company that uses a lot of fuel and whose trucks drive many miles, could pay more for a efficient technology which pays back only after 75.000-100.000 miles.

i think the industrial transport sector won't experience a lot of problems.
Like
http://www.greencarcongress.com/
they can increase their fuel efficiency, optimize their ways, use alternatives and so reduce their fuel consumption by 30-50%.

efficiency is realy the key. With a 50% reduction of liquid fuel consumption we even don't need hydrogen. Just BTL or cellulosic ethanol.

the scenario that walmart, ups , .. will charge their fleet with electric power at night is not far away.

Nevada could store the thermal energy from sun a few days and fuel up those trucks with electricity at night.

[Pops]

I started a thread once about cooking food from scratch. It seemed to make sense to my little brain that pre-cooked, pre-packaged, virtually pre-chewed food was wasteful – until I read a study that proved just the opposite because of scale and control.

I think the same goes for large retailers. Delivering large amounts of goods to a central warehouse, and in turn distributing a large variety of goods to large stores based on intense computer tracking and historical demand information has made the Waltons the richest family in the world.

And certainly the most modern farms are more efficient now than 40 years ago with no-till planting and GPS controlled application of fertilizer and pesticide using past harvest data in field areas (I’d guess) as small as 10sq ft.

I think the dynamic is the relative cost of labor and inventory vs. fuel and technology.

But that’s the rub; the higher fuel costs go, the more these economies of scale will be dominant and the less the incentive to localize.

That is at least to the point that constriction of the economy reverses the labor cost vs. fuel cost ratio.

[Kingcoal]

If you look at a modern superduper market in the US, they are huge because of the processed food. Back in 1970, we used to get our groceries at a store which was about 1/6 the size, but I actually remember eating better back then. My mom didn't have the huge varieties of processed crap to chose from, however, there was a plentiful supply of ingredience for actually preparing dishes from scratch. Yes, we ate better back then.

Today, mom's are lazy or tired from working 9-5 to support the Mc Mansion. She just loves those Hot Pockets and other forms of contrived crap which you just have to heat up. My grandmother must be rolling around in her grave.

The modern super market is larger in order to house all the petro enhanced, corn based carbohydrate crap that passes for food these days.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') started a thread once about cooking food from scratch. It seemed to make sense to my little brain that pre-cooked, pre-packaged, virtually pre-chewed food was wasteful – until I read a study that proved just the opposite because of scale and control.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bonjaski', 't')he scenario that walmart, ups , .. will charge their fleet with electric power at night is not far away.

Nevada could store the thermal energy from sun a few days and fuel up those trucks with electricity at night.

[gigacannon]

Those refrigerators use up a lot of energy, but overall, yeah, I'd say that supermarkets are efficient, for the same reason that it's more efficient if everyone gets the bus instead of driving in their own car.

If things get really bad, then it's relatively likely we'll see energy and fuel rationing. If this is the case, people still need to get fed on the cheap, right? So, they'll keep the supermarkets open.

With rationing and proper management, peak oil wouldn't necessarily be that bad a problem. Western society wastes huge amounts of energy; by blocking imports of plastic toys and other consumer crap, for example, a lot of oil and energy would be saved. And on the plus side, it'd make Christmas a hell of a lot cheaper and probably a damn sight more fun.

[pea-jay]

As long as we keep this experiment in supersized settlements (aka cities) we will need some form of fuel intensive food delivery system, no doubt expending more energy than yielded in caloric value. This is not impossible so long as the surrounding rural lands feed themselves locally and synergystically as possible manage energy and nutrient flows. This works by returning the function of the local rural settlements as agrarian communities. They would be self sufficient in food production and do basic level food processing such as baking, canning, milling and perhaps even meal preparation as well. At this level, all transportation could be made by pushcart, horse, bike cart or simply carried.

The goal of each community would be to produce a surplus of food to be sent to larger level communities. A single trip every few days would be sufficient or daily parcelized service in combination with a bus or train trip would also work. Enough of these local communities would have to be created to support larger cities. These cities would also supplant their food production with limited rooftop, vacant lot and community garden agricultural production and food processing would be done in that city and consumed as well. Ideally all waste vegatable oil could be transtesterfied into biodiesel to drive the trucks (that would be traveling a few hundred miles at most) while waste food would be composted or tossed into a biogas generator. Ditto for human waste. Compost created in the big city could be used in the city or carted out of town. Ideally more waste would be turned into usable energy (gas or liquid fuels) in larger settlements and compost in smaller ones.

The food system would not involve multi-state or international trade of crops for economic reasons. My apple juice my kids are drinking comes from apples picked in the US, China and New Zealand, processed in New Jersey and trucked across the country to Oregon. We won't continue to do this. Small settlements will send a few gallons of apple juice (if they have any) to larger cities via truck, train, barge or even human-based delivery services. Combined freight trips will improve the efficiency and operating supermarkets in the cities would be more efficient than a number of corner stores.

It's idealistic, I know. On paper it kind of pencils out, especially if the agricultural techniques are low energy, high labor methods such as bio-intensive cultivation and synergystic farming (which utilizes vermicompost, mushroom raising, small animal(rabbits/chicken/fish) production, raised bed cultivation, and intercropping) techniques. Additionally we would ditch most forms of disposable plastic containers for glass and paper. Both require significant initial energy investments but properly reused or recycled within each community, that too would aid significantly.

To read more about what I think would be an idealistic layout for future settlements read here. This won't help out those of you in desert regions, but other than that it would be a good start.

[IslandCrow]

It will also depend on the population density. To get to a mega supermarket I would need to get two ferries and drive about 70-75 km - a round trip in the car, if I get the ferry connections right, of 3 hours. The maths of this means that for me it is much more efficient and cheaper to walk to the local store, even if the food prices are higher.

Now if I lived in the city, then it would be super efficient to cycle to the mega supermarkets.

I guess if production can be local then local stores would be more efficient. For example there is a local bakery near my house, which undercuts the cost of supermarket bread in the city by nearly 20%. He can do this because he does not have to run a distribution system, and he basically sells all the production himself, so a profit needs only to be made by the bakery, not by the bakery, the central distribution organisation and the local shop. Last week a regional bakery went bankrupt because they could not afford to run a distribution system competing with the national bakeries.

So I guess that the efficiency will be at both ends: the local production serving the local needs would IMO win out, but there would only be a very limited supply of goods. Otherwise the megastores with massive distribution chains will probably clobber the middle sized companies.


Other miscellaneous lessons I have learned: eggs sold in villages tend to be larger than those sold in towns. The cucumbers and tomatos from local green houses are so much more tasty than those sold in the major supermarkets (is this a function of the time taken in the distribution system?). Even with this difference, there is a much larger gap in the quality of imported cucumbers (usually from Spain) which IMO taste awful (although imported tomatos are fine). So I find that quality of fresh goods are higher in the smaller stores.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IslandCrow', 'T')he cucumbers and tomatos from local green houses are so much more tasty than those sold in the major supermarkets (is this a function of the time taken in the distribution system?).

[gg3]

Local markets and mini-supermarkets will become the more cost-effective option as commuting by single-occupancy automobile declines. The factor here is not so much the cost of fuel as the cost of individuals' time.

A person who is commuting solo by car can choose to stop at a bigbox store on the way home. This makes the bigbox store a more efficient choice for that individual.

However, if a person has to make a special trip for groceries, they will favor the store closer to their home, due to the saving in time vs. time spent to drive a greater distance. These are cases such as the following:

= Person does not commute to work. (telecommuter or works near home)

= Person uses public transport to commute to work. (infeasibility of making intermediate stops, particularly where rail transport is used and a bus must be taken from the rail stop to the bigbox store and back)

= Person uses carpooling to commute to work. Here the issue is schedule synchronization: the difficulty of planning for days when *all* members of the carpool a) need groceries and b) do not have to be home as early as possible to take care of kids etc. If even one person doesn't need groceries, s/he will object to the added time for the shopping stop. If even one person needs to be home at a fixed time (e.g. for their kids), s/he will also object. Meanwhile, those who definitely need to go shopping on those nights, will get home and have to make special trips.

The above cases will tend to favor the mini-supermarkets of the type that presently thrive in mixed-use urban areas and small towns. Stores of this type will become more prevalent in suburbs as commuting trends change away from single-occupant automobiles.

So in essence what we have is, a) cost of fuel causes people to seek out alternatives to single-occupant automobile commuting, and then b) those alternatives are not amenable to making intermediate stops at bigbox stores, and so c) the opportunity-cost of driving time for special trips to bigbox stores causes people to seek out grocery stores that are closer to home.

---

Meanwhile, WalMart will either mutate into something else or fail entirely as soon as the flow of inexpensive manufactured goods from China becomes more expensive or less accessible. This is a foregone conclusion of changes in economic relations between the US and China.

Major supermarket chains such as Safeway could sustain themselves by offering delivery services that operate in evening hours. This is presently done in the Bay Area (California, USA). Smaller supermarket chains will follow suit (Andronico's, Gristede's, etc.). Local supermarkets in some metro areas notably Manhattan, presently handle this contingency by using large 3-wheeled delivery tricycles (chain-driven rear wheel, cargo box up front on two wheels). Using human-powered vehicles and small electric vehicles is feasible in high-density areas where a store's radius of service is relatively compact.

In any case, a relatively small number of trucks, traveling fixed routes to deliver to local grocers, is far more energy efficient than the much larger number of cars needed for individuals to drive to centralized bigbox stores. The travel time of the truck driver is a paid job; the travel time of the individuals to the store is an overhead time cost to each individual. The cost of time is relevant to buying decisions. Bigbox stores were an artifact not only of cheap energy, but of the way individual time has been organized as a result of cheap energy. Change any factor in this equation and the outcome will also change.

[Pops]

Gg3’s post relating to the organization of people’s time brings up a question that is somewhat related here and that is the make-up of the workforce in the future.

IF:

Energy costs – especially transport related cost, rise indefinitely and;

The overall economy begins to stagnate or even shrink and;

Unemployment rises, causing

Wages to decline

Then – won’t many 2-income families decide that both partners can’t afford to work outside the home? And if so would that have an impact on store preference?

As an example, I have a nephew whos wife basically works for a couple hundred dollars a month after the cost of childcare, lots of take-out meals, gas, car, clothes, increased tax rate, etc are all taken into account. As those costs rise and her salary stagnates, at some point it will cost more to go to work than stay home.

Aside from the fact that many people deciding the same will cause the economy to shrink further and eliminate more marginal business and jobs in the process; what effect would the reduction of the two-income family have on the distribution network?

[IslandCrow]

gg3 - very good points about how the mega superstores fit into the current driving patterns of people.

One more factor that may move against BIG BOX, is that as prices get more expensive, people would have to buy less and so there might not be so much need for big stores. At least here the big stores have only a small part for food, and maybe 75% for other goods.

One thing that I don't like about big boxes is that although they have a wide variety of goods the range in each section is quite limited. OK I am slim (shirt fitting B), which means that there is no point in me shopping in the big box super stores for shirts or trousers, because they only stock sizes C and larger. Similarly with books - they have a number of very cheap books, but a very limited range.

[strider3700]

I'm going to assume that my semi rural location isn't that different from suburbia. My closest store is about 1 mile away and it's a gas station. The closest grocery store is not a giant big box but it's not a local markey either, it's about 3 miles away. Having said that I won't likely be shopping at either any time soon. Each day on my way home I drive past 3 Big box grocery stores the local walmart, a costco and the home depot. So I shop while on the return trip.

When things get too ugly/expensive to drive I'll take the bus which goes by each day ( the times suck but it beats walking) and it stops right infront of one of those big box stores so it will probably be my grocery store. It's also within easy walking distance of where I work.

If things get so ugly that the bus isn't running then I'll be biking it to the grocery store 3 miles away( some nasty hills make this less then pleasant) At least the ride up hill is empty. By that point I have my doubts that there will be much available anyways, hopefully the garden will be holding up.