[REAL Green]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'A')nd I say adding resilience to the current system as a whole is a better approach than beefing up resilience in your locale. Covid19 is showing how fragil our JIT system is. Some are already starting to move to add more resilience to it:

[kublikhan]

Sounds like the same tired doomestead drivel that was popular all the way back to soviet era bomb shelters. Except this time ramped up to the local level. "Me and my enlightened friends will get through the apocalypse ok so I did my part." No thanks.

[REAL Green]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'S')ounds like the same tired doomestead drivel that was popular all the way back to soviet era bomb shelters. Except this time ramped up to the local level. "Me and my enlightened friends will get through the apocalypse ok so I did my part." No thanks.

[kublikhan]

Says the guy who uses Zerohedge as his source.

[REAL Green]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'S')ays the guy who uses Zerohedge as his source.

[mousepad]

Ok, let’s dig a little deeper.

There’s different kind of efficiency and different kind of crops.
There’s energy efficiency, meaning how much can I produce per unit energy input. And there’s time efficiency, how much can I produce per labor hour.

With energy prices practically free compared to labor costs, the first step a business does is automate to eliminate labor hours, even if that means added energy use. This works especially well for row crops, as I can buy a bigger bader tractor to harvest my field in half the time (but certainly not half the fuel). Combine this with location (soil/climate etc) and you have prime spots of growing wheat and corn. More over, the harvest is not time critical and can be shipped in bulk carrier at a leasurly rate.
That’s why even the old Romans used to grow their wheat in north africa, because the yield advantage of egyptian fields was more than enough to offset the added transportation cost to get the crop to Rome.

Now let’s take tomatoes. I buy my tomatoes from a farm 20 miles away. So worst case I travel 40 miles round trip to get tomatoes. Sometimes the farmer can deliver by integrating my house into his delivery route, cutting down the energy cost of the tomatoes transport.
I compare that to the tomatoes I can by at Costco which have been transported in refrigerated trucks from mexico (2000 miles away). Are you serious that the ENERGY cost of my local tomatoes are worse than the ones transported 2000 miles?
The only reason for this transport to have happened is because energy is practically free.

Once energy (transportation) cost go up, localization will come back.

cost_at_user = cost_of_production + cost_of transportation


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', '
')I've come to realize that BAU, unsustainable as it may be, is the way it is, for a reason.

[mousepad]

I have to add that we have to be careful not to mix cost with energy input in our discussions. Those are 2 different things.
A business' interest is to reduce cost, not energy use.

When I grow a tomatoe in my garden, the energy input is practically 0, but the amount of time I spend makes the tomateo as valuable as gold. A business on the other hand tries to minimize labor input, even at the cost of increased (practically free) energy input.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'N')ow let’s take tomatoes. I buy my tomatoes from a farm 20 miles away. So worst case I travel 40 miles round trip to get tomatoes. Sometimes the farmer can deliver by integrating my house into his delivery route, cutting down the energy cost of the tomatoes transport.
I compare that to the tomatoes I can by at Costco which have been transported in refrigerated trucks from mexico (2000 miles away). Are you serious that the ENERGY cost of my local tomatoes are worse than the ones transported 2000 miles?

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'N')ow let’s take tomatoes. I buy my tomatoes from a farm 20 miles away. So worst case I travel 40 miles round trip to get tomatoes. Sometimes the farmer can deliver by integrating my house into his delivery route, cutting down the energy cost of the tomatoes transport.
I compare that to the tomatoes I can by at Costco which have been transported in refrigerated trucks from mexico (2000 miles away). Are you serious that the ENERGY cost of my local tomatoes are worse than the ones transported 2000 miles?

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'T')he farmer in mexico STILL has to drive the tomatoes 20 miles to the semi hub.

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'Y')es, but don't those tomato trucks have the same huge capacity? So instead of 2000 miles it's 2020 miles? That does not significantly alter the numbers.

[asg70]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('REAL Green', '
')What about when the trucks stop and you are facing hunger?

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', ' ')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('REAL Green', '
')Local food can't compete with industrial food on price and raw efficiency but that does not mean it shouldn't be embraced. We are talking increased community and care for the planet

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'L')et's look at the numbers for the transportation:
40 miles round trip, divided by 20 mpg = 2 gallons of fuel. 2 gallons / 1 pound of tomatoes = 2 gallons per pound. Or if you bought 20 pounds of tomatoes it would be 2 gallons / 20 pounds = .1 gallons per pound.
2000 miles / 5mpg = 400 gallons of fuel. 400 gallons / 40,000 pounds of goods = .01 gallons per pound.
Even if you bought 20 pounds of tomatoes, you still used 10 times as much fuel per pound to transport those tomatoes. The numbers look better the more goods are transported. If your local tomato farmer is delivering 200 pounds of tomatoes per trip, he would break even with the mexican tomatoes, assuming it's the same 40 mile round trip.

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')+1

This is an example of how things are getting better, re efficiency, even as the "let's return to the days of mom and pop shops" folks who IGNORE math, spew.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'A')nother one who thinks 1st mile + long haul + last mile is better than 1st mile + last mile.
Are you for real?

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'A')nother one who thinks 1st mile + long haul + last mile is better than 1st mile + last mile.
Are you for real?

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'M')aybe. But that is to show that local can be competitive. I could easily pick up 500 lbs and then distribute the tomatoes in my neighborhood. Why don't I do that? Because people prefer individualism. They want to pick up the tomato when they want where they want, how they want. Even if it cost more energy. But once transportation cost becomes a significant part of the cost of the product, you will see change. It's all a matter of planing and organization. Currently last mile distribution is driven by convenience above all, not by minimizing energy cost.

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'N')ot even $150 oil ushered in those changes.

[Newfie]

Somehow I get the feeling the discussion is really about population. In order to feed 7.5 billion you need massive scale and those efficiencies. But no matter how good those efficiencies are we are still massively over using available resources; water, soil, fuel, CO2 absorption.

If you could bring the population down to about 1/3 of now and retain those efficiencies that would be good. But what happens when the population drops that much? Do those efficiencies go away? If they do then you are left only with local, and likely another population loss.

I don’t think any of us really know that answer, but it seems clear to me that a population defrosts or 2/3rds is the minimum required.