Conservation in the food chain
Posted by Yankee on March 27, 2006 - 12:32am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: green revolution, locally grown food, oil, organic [list all tags]
Today, the San Francisco Chronicle has a human interest piece called "The oil in your oatmeal: A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast" that essentially distills the end of the Harper's article into a concise recounting of the amount of fossil fuel energy that goes into making "a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee."
My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.
Maybe the author Chad Heeter is sensationalizing the case a little bit, but the issue is an important one, I think. Now, I know that many of our readers are skeptical about sustainable agriculture and whether eating local and/or organic will be able to feed the world. In all likelihood, it will not. There are way too many people in the world for that, and too many of us live in places where we cannot have access even to the staples. Besides, there was certainly transportation of food before the advent of trucks and cars, so it's not the case that increasing our reliance on local agriculture should mean the end of all oranges from Florida or lettuce from California. It simply means that we should strive to increase the production of local food so that less energy is needed to package, store, cool, and transport our food over thousands of miles. A step toward flattening the peak, if you will.
The way I see it, the call for favoring locally grown foods does not by definition have to mean relying on them exclusively. I'm not talking about what happens long after the peak—I mean right now, while we still have 6.6 billion people in the world and no immediate plans for the decimation of the population. If we can advocate for conservation of heating oil or gasoline for our cars, why can't we have a similar sort of "conservation" of long distance foods? It seems reasonable that if people opt for locally grown items whenever possible, they'll be cutting down on some unnecessary expenditure of fossil fuels.
Obviously, I'm not the modeler on TOD, but I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how many barrels of oil we would save if, say, we decreased the distance that food travels on average by 15% or 20%. (And just to head off the inevitable discussion, yes, Jevons Paradox undoubtedly applies here. We all already know that.)
There are plenty of good arguments in favor of eating local foods whenever possible, but for me, I trust my taste buds.
I rather like the seasonality and look forward to the first parsnips, green beans, lettuce etc. Currently I'm eating: leeks, purple sprouting broccoli (yummy), swede, carrots, parsnips, celery, shallots, tuscan kale, russian red kale, salad onions, garlic, raddichio, jerusalem artichokes, squashes. I don't have a greenhouse, one would increase the variety of vegetables at this time of year. May will probably be the nadir of supply and choice - when the winter veg has run out and the early summer crops are barely starting.
Sadly I am just reaching the end of my stored onions and potatoes (have given too many away, methinks!) - I grew small amounts of 12 different varieties last year and will be planting 20 varieties in a couple of weeks time. It's quite depressing, taste-wise, eating shop bought potatoes again :-(
Since I already live on a small farm, it was pretty easy to eat about 80 percent of our food locally. Especially since we have a herd of delicious Angus cattle.
But we also bought local organic pork, chicken and fish. We have a ranch co-op already in place that sells local meats.
We also have many organic orchards here, so we had lots of apples, apricots, peaches, etc. We also canned a lot of stuff from our big garden. Have you ever tried pickled green beans? Delicious ...
We still have to buy coffee, dairy products (no local dairy) sugar and flour. This year someone is starting a local wheat farm/mill so we can localize that, too.
And of course I still have to buy ice cream ... :-)
I have: I grow a very early variety that will produce nice excellent tasting tubers but is rather prone to blight (Dore). It will produce before summer though which is the main blight season. I also grow a late variety (Texla) which shows remarkable resitance to late blight. That way I circumvent the blight problem a bit. I hope.
Posted by Ken Meter at 8:23 AM on 10 Feb 2006
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/9/211544/4045
The author has some good statistics. Among them is that California is already a net food importer. Currently it is cheaper to buy an artichoke from South American than one grown locally in California. Of course, as energy prices go up, I'm sure that will change.
As I have previously said, I think that one of the best long term investments that we can make is to invest in organic farming--if nothing else, by leasing out the land to an organic farmer. Short term, the ROI will be poor, but the point is to secure a long term supply of food. It's a win/win proposition: you can make money off Peak Oil while making a positive impact on the community (and perhaps providing a job for your unemployed college graduate).
Another positive move is to sign up for a local food coop program, whereby a group of people make monthly payments to farmers, in exchange for weekly deliveries of produce during the growing season.
It's a good way to learn farming, if you want to learn but don't have your own land yet. Also, the surplus goes to local food pantries, so you can help the community while helping yourself.
I found there is one in walking distance of my home, at a local college.
I wanted to thank you for that mention of Garret Hardin in a recent thread. I had forgotten that seminal article on the commons he wrote in 1968. It is dead-on relevant for this group. Your book suggestion is on order. I think the TOD readership might want to either reacquaint itself with, or become familiar, with this man. He is a giant.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
One of these days I'd like to see a thread on the tragedy of the commons, because it is the single most important concept (IMO) prerequisite to understanding how the world has gotten into its present situation, and, again in my opinion, Garrett Hardin presents unique solutions backed up by rigorous science.
The problem, of course, is that facts and scientific interpretation go contrary to what most of us want to believe.
As I have stated before, there are no limits to human self-deception, and unless and until we face up to the tragedy of the commons there can be no hope of a better world.
In the Environmental Economics class I used to teach back in the seventies, I used Hardin's "Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle" and found the freshman students, even the average ones, were able to grasp the material, and some became passionately interested in the environmental movement as a result of studying the book. Truly, it is a life-transforming volume--and the classic essay (included as an Appendix to the book) is the best place to start.
BTW, Hardin's thinking is consistent with both capitalism and mainstream economic thinking, because he insists that prices should reflect all costs, not just "accounting" or "internal" costs but also external costs as well.
I know of no economist (no matter how disreputable) who claims that "external" costs should not be taken account of in decision-making. The problem comes in how to implement the idea of internalizing external costs, and also how to implement "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon."
Obviously, markets cannot function where the commons is destroyed--and that applies not only to population increase but to pollution and to overuse of any and all natural resources.
Unfortunately, Hardin's rigorous scientific conclusions are rejected by politically correct Democrats and both religious-right and "free-market-fat-cat" Republicans. That is one reason I seldom vote for either members of either two major parties--because they both fail, and fail equally, to come to grips with the most fundamental problems.
Here it is. You hit the lotto, set up a bank account for your family with exactly one million bucks in it, and it's a joint account. You invite your family to a table and explain that this joint account is to teach them to cooperate. You hand out the VISA Debit cards and have them sign a no-harassment contract.
Each family member will realise that they gain most by draining the account as quickly as possible, so the race is on, once the first makes the move. The end-game occurs when the last bit of money is in the bank and all of them show up at the bank to extract the last bit of money. With family members packing heat, a shooting or two occurs. And everyone who survives is permanently angry at everyone else. Meanwhile, you DID make sure to hide in Ft. McMurray (which they conviently don't know about) so when they waste money looking for you in resort towns in Europe they never find you.
This thought experiment has all the ingredients of a tragedy of the commons. A commons, the joint account, game theory dictating that players maximise gain by draining it despite it being to others' detriment, and selfishness overriding cooperation. We know that married couples have money squabbles any time a joint account exists, like the extreme case above.
But, but...the free market says that is what the consumer wants!
coff coff
Free Market my !jack male donkey
VIA http://www.pastpeak.com/ I present the free market at work
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/usda_slaughters_creekstone.html
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/preventtesting010305.cfm
And that leads to:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/ap/politics/3743815
BIG TOPIC CHANGE!
Jay Hanson, Reg Morrision, author of "Spirit in the Gene", and ANGRYCHIMP are engaging in a totally mind-stunning debate on instinctive conspiracies & open conspiracies.
If you have not joined the Yahoo forum DIEOFF_Q&A, NOW IS THE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans SMarter than Yeast?
It would also be interesting to do an ERoEI analysis of dehydrating or sun-drying essential fruits and vegetables before shipping them to markets vs moving all the water inside these consumables. For example, I love bananas, but when the energy costs of shipping them whole from Central America exceeds my budget, I will gladly buy dehydrated banana chips if the cost is reasonable. Obviously, taste & texture changed, but the essential vitamins and minerals are still there.
This might be a crucial factor going forward to prevent vitamin deficiency diseases like scurvy, beriberi, etc in habitats that cannot grow these foodstuffs locally due to climate [or an alternative foodstuff]. This is based on my assumption that industrial vitamin and mineral supplements have a lower ERoEI ratio than what Nature can provide, or which the future lack of industrial technology can sustain. Perhaps other posters have better facts?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
'Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.'
No, actually, they aren't. As the first comment here pointed out, it is actually possible to taste the difference between good and 'convenient' food - and strange as it may sound, most people actually choose good, apart from the English speaking world at least.
To put it a slightly different way - when Germans visit America and return, they always remark on how chlorinated the tap water is, and how good it is to actually start enjoying real food again (and no, they don't just mean bread, chocolate, and beer) - the amount of sugar, salt, fat, preservatives, flavorings, colorings, and processing are simply unaccustomed, and quite honestly, they see no reason to get used to it.
And let's not even mention genetically modified crops. It has taken more than a decade for American agribusiness to use various trade organizations to get GMO food into Europe, and still governments here are talking about accepting the fines and not allowing U.S. GMO imports - after all, European citizens remain the ones who determine who keeps power in Europe's capitals, not American multis.
This may also be one of the main reasons Europe has retained local farming to a major degree - people here want it, regardless of how 'inefficient' and 'costly' it is. Politicians can't simply wave the magic wand of 'free market' without people asking why is it every time the free market wand is waved, the rich get richer, and no else does.
Well, that just might be the explanation - unlike Americans, Europeans just don't care much about the sizzle - they actually taste the steak, and that is what they are buying.
I don't think the Chinese and Indians (both with truly thousands of years of culinary history) are any less capable of knowing when something tastes better or worse, regardless of how loud the sizzle.
Perhaps I have gone native after all these years, but I sure do like the stuff my mother-in-law buys twice a week at the farmers' market, and the milk (still warm from the cow), meat and game we buy directly from farmers and hunters we know.
Of course we also buy canned and packaged stuff (we're not saints), and for every person buying at the farmers' market, there are probably many here who are only interested in how cheaply they can get processed, preserved, packaged food at Aldi. The fresh stuff is "too expensive" and some of the small farmers who grow it are being driven out of business.
Indeed, the tap water here (near Munich) is filtered but otherwise untreated and tastes great. What I want to know is, in a country where they have the best tap water in the world (at least the parts of it that I've visited), why do so many people prefer bottled water that costs more than gasoline?
And even in an Aldi, a lot of the food is not that processed, and a surprising quantity is actually regional. Of course, the percentage of processed and non-regional products has been growing for years.
Rather seems eating locally would worsen the problem, so the best option would be to change ones diet to incorporate only the things that can efficiently be grown locally. Good thing I like potatoes and beetroot.
If one assumes the difference in solar radiation received between Sweden and Spain is not a magnitude different, then the heat required to create a conducive inside climate suitable for tomatoes to grow must account for the greater part of this difference. If a cheap way can be found to heat these Swedish greenhouses by wind, tidal-gen, hydro, biofuels, etc, then the embedded energy cost can come down to be price competitive with Spain's outside fields. If not, you are correct with what you state in your last paragraph.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The heat energy would be almost free but the capital cost for the piping and the certified parts inside the condensors would be expensive. But it would probably have a very long life lenght with good materials and control on the water chemistry of the circulated water. The lifetime energy efficiency might be good.
It is probably a lot simpler to get all the paperwork done for heating with biomass in a simple boiler. But there are a lot of uses for that biomass and almost none for low grade waste heat.
But greenhouses still have their problems. The biggest one being that they heat up a lot during a summer day, and that heat is usually vented, then they cool too much at night. My favourite solution to this is described here.
The system stores excess daytime and summer heat underground and releases it at night and later in the season. I'm building a completely passive version of this system on my farm this summer. It should extend the growing season well into the fall. Of course, since the system is almost closed, I have to find a source of carbon-dioxide. The conventional system is burning propane. For some reason, I don't like that. Carbon-rich composting is the best idea I've come up with.
When things start to cool off outside, the heat transfer from the water will prevent your plants from getting any nighttime frost damage.
I believe this is similar to a system used in the Andes mountains for growing potatos.
However, if you can incorporate a phase-change (ie. water vapour to/from liquid) you improve the energy storage by approximately two orders of magnitude. This is easy to do and doesn't require much in the way of high-technology.
The passive system I'm building relies on nothing but ADT drainage tubing installed in the soil beneath a terraced greenhouse. The temperature and elevation differentials circulate the air through the system. The main variable I have to tune is the total amount of drainage tubing.
In order to achieve that 15-20% cut you would have to interfere with the market, so as the closer the origin of the product the lower its price. That's not easy since agriculture is a perfect competition market. One thing might help though, ending with the outrageos subsidizing. For instance half of the EU budget goes to argiculture, that's a capital mistake.
There are of course other problems, most countries import products bcause they can't grow them at home. For instance China imports a great deal of corn from overseas (much from the US); what in fact China is importing is not corn, but the water spent in growing the corn crops.
I don't believe that the Green Revolution will work at a local level, that's not the way it works. You might have some room to scalling it down to a continental level (i.e. Europe, North America, South America, etc) where with a smaller transport network you can have the same menu at the table. Scalling down beyond that will mean cutting down on the menu and probably on the caloric content of it.
And finally bare in mind that we are 6500 million today, but business as usual will take us near 8000 million 15 years from now.
the remark 'For instance half of the EU budget goes to argiculture, that's a capital mistake.' is the sort of attitude which needs a lot more discussion.
Of course, any government program will have elements of both absurdity and stupidity, and no form of social organization or economic distribution is perfect. Noting flaws, looking for objective points of discussion, and trying to improve how things are done is necessary.
But when I look around at the all the farm fields, forests, the sheep flocks wandering through this region of Germany grazing slowly from open field to open field (and adding their small part to sustainable fertilizers), I just can't see the 'capital mistake' - even in the sense of a pun - this is a good use of capital.
And for the slightly innocent - another reason Europe is so tenacious in maintaining food sufficiency, however defined, is a few thousand years of experience in war teaches you a few basic lessons which even a generation or two of peace and prosperity won't shake loose.
As a side note - the cover of Der Spiegel is featuring the resource wars - and the two most prominent featured faces are workers. Europe also knows that destruction is a poor way to build. But I can only imagine a Time or Newsweek cover dealing with the theme would likely prominently display weapons - the difference between an old industrial has-been like Germany and the post-industrial wunderkind America could be illustrated right there. America seems to feel the resource wars will be fought with tanks, carriers, and cluster bombs. Other political systems are pretty sure it will be fought mainly with contracts, machinery, and workers. Of course, there is a tank in the upper left corner of the Spiegel cover - this is Germany, after all.
Who then is making a capital mistake, absolutely no pun intended, by thinking carrier battle groups are useful in resource extraction? Ask the Iraqis - it seems as if bombs and guns don't actually increase oil production - who could have guessed?
A strangely ironic thought - not only may America be the first society that went from barbarism to decadence in a leap (sorry, no cite), it may also be the first that actually attacked itself, becoming its own barbarian at the gate, offering nothing but violence and death to itself.
"Capital mistake" is not put, at least I didn't use it that way.
Can you tell me why half the budget goes to agriculture? Why won't it go to the auto industry (it would help in Germany), or to the aerospace industry?
Think about it, what are you the tax payer and consumer, winning from this heavy subsdizing of agriculture?
true, I am the one that made the pun - it was not in your original post.
But as for subsidies/tax breaks - the car industry in Germany already gets enough by off-shorin