Sunday
Sep052010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill More on locavores
Sep 5, 2010 Greens Matt Ridley picks up on Stephen Budiansky's posting on locavores - those who would have us buy our food from farmers' markets and local producers. In particular, he notes Budiansky's comment:
The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far...
If this is right, then could it be that microwave meals are actually the green option? Wouldn't that represent a dilemma for the chattering classes?
Reader Comments (18)
Let them eat MRE's. Obvious final solution for concerned greens, make a sustainable/environmentally friendly version of those and wish them the best of luck. Less need to worry about how to heat them if it's dark and the wind isn't blowing as well.
Interesting thought. It would certainly make the "slow food" movement, where you make lots of thick stews n'things which take hours to cook distinctly ungreen.
Hmm, anyone know anyone good at sums?
Feeling cold, tired, hungry? Eat an environmentalist today!
[1974 Massachusetts' bumper sticker.]
Eat my greens? Not a whole one.....
"stews n'things which take hours to cook"
It's not the time, it's the energy. A slow cooker, consuming 60W (say) for 8 hours, uses less than a normal 2kW cooker running for 15 mins (the time it takes to warm up).
It's not just that supermarkets insist on distributing everything from centralised depots - they actively prevent local shops from sourcing locally if that supplier is contracted to the supermarket. Our local greengrocer cannot, for instance, obtain tomatoes grown 5 miles away because all their output is earmarked for the SM, who still get to choose how much they take and insist that the surplus is not sold to anyone else*. To exacerbate the problem, the grower cannot even supply directly to local branches of the supermarket - it has to be driven to the depot and back, which in our case involves two ferry journeys!
By contrast, I can buy sweetcorn from a village farm shop within walking distance that is also grown within walking distance. Thus we buy sweetcorn, but grow tomatoes...
*Yes, it is thrown away.
@ James P - that comment about food going all the way to a central depot, and back again was raised in a newspaper article earlier this week. The answer (according to a major supermarket) is that this practice actually reduces energy usage! They claim that lots of smaller vehicles making multiple trips from farm to local shops is less efficient.
The cynic in me would counter that by saying that the supermarkets would much prefer it if there were NO local shops at all...
And if homemade apple & blackberry pie is responsible for killing polar bears, then so be it. We have a small freezer specifically to store the fruits (sic) of my labours for later consumption.
To a politician, simple. Import too much - bad - tax it. Buy local too much - bad - tax it. Cook it too long - bad - tax it. Don't cook it - get sick - bad - tax it.
This is the bit I don't like. Supermarkets are getting too powerful and too dominant in the food chain. My town's about to get it's 10th Tescos. Not satisfied with supermarkets, they're diversifying into smaller stores and busily squeezing out the independents. For a population of 150k, 10 Tescos seems a bit excessive. On the supply side, they seem happy to lock farmers/suppliers into rigorous contracts, then do the classic margin squeeze. Politicians seem happy to do nothing given the generous donations, if less generous tax minimisation and increasing inflation due to rising food costs. Consumers don't seem to benefit, producers neither, but middle men happily cream the profits.
This I think is the best justification for farmers markets as it at least gives farmers some protection from their main customer, who doesn't always seem to have their interests at heart.
As for slow cookers, they can prise mine from my cold, dead fingers. They're great for stews, soups, chili and generally making tasty stuff :)
"this practice actually reduces energy usage"
The way to test that is to wait until fuel trebles in price and see if they still think it's a good idea! I think that a savage fuel crisis (which will happen eventually) would sort out quite a few bad practices, but there would be plenty of collateral damage, of course.
"Supermarkets are getting too powerful and too dominant in the food chain"
Too true. Sorry to harp on, but you would not believe how harshly they treat suppliers. For instance, all those BOGOF deals are not, as you might have thought, cost-cutting or generosity on the part of the supermarket, they are negotiated with the supplier, who provides the necessary discount for the privilege of being allowed to keep their contract!
James P
Unfortunately, fuel price is a fairly small fraction of the Total Cost of Ownership of a vehicle - and of total operating costs.
You have to factor in leasing costs, maintenance costs, insurance, and drivers.
I did the numbers once and you'd have to raise the price of fuel by 10 times to double the whole-of life costs of a medium sized car.
As an aside, in my motoring life, fuel price has risen by a factor of 10, so my kids put $80 in the tank while I'd put in $8 at the same age. I earned $1.09/hr and they earn a minimum $12/hr
"Tesco was also a £12m sponsor of the Millennium Dome. It was reported in The Observer at the time that lobbying firm, LLM - involved in a campaign on behalf of Tesco to block plans for a tax on shopping centre car parks - had 'suggested that a £12 million Tesco donation to the Millennium Dome was part of a 'quid pro quo deal'—giving its support to a government project in order to endear itself to New Labour. The paper went
on to say that there is no suggestion that Tesco made the Dome donation to help it get its way over the car park tax issue. But the plan to impose the tax was dropped from the White Paper on transport—and the terms of the exemption were exactly as LLM's Ben Lucas had
suggested. The Sunday Times said that the estimated cost to Tesco of the car park tax would have been £40 million."
Wonderful organization..not!
the most efficient would be mega canteens like the ones you find in armies and big schools.
it must be possible to make them a city service so people go eat there.
that would make city people the most energy efficient.
suburban should be taxed that it hurts so they move to blocks, and the ones that live 3 miles off in the woods in a mansion should have to pay for the road electricity and water all for themselves. it is a scandal that the community has to pay for access for the posh
I like the Hong Kong blocks , 30 stories but each of the 4-6 appartment on each floor has plenty of windows and a big outside terrace. Also continental european developments are very high quality . In UK this is all not possible because the yoofs and addicts have all the rights to live out their speshul vandalism proclivities.
"fuel price is a fairly small fraction of the Total Cost of Ownership of a vehicle"
Jerry - I was thinking of the lorries, rather than the cars, where I assume it forms a larger part of the TCO. It may be hard to believe, but we already pay more than double the US price for fuel in the UK (currently around $8/gallon in your money)!
James P
Actually I am in Australia. We pay at this time about $1.20/l it has been up to $1.80/l. When I started buying fuel it was in the range $0.010/l upwards
For comparison using todays exchange rate I started out paying UKP 0.056 cpl
I now pay 0.716 UKP / l I'm not sure what you actually pay now in pence per litre
Sorry, Jerry - my mistake. You're still paying rather less, but you may well have some longer journeys! It's around 115-120p/litre here.
I don't really know how much fuel costs are a factor in food distribution, but it always strikes me as daft to see large trucks going in both directions on the motorways, each carrying the same stuff!
Bish - I've read Matt Ridley's article properly now, and the points he makes are certainly thought-provoking. Microwave meals might be more efficient, but is that real food?
One further issue to take in to account is that cooking food actually reduces the energy required to digest it. Carnivores such as lions use about 25 per cent of their total energy intake just to digest their food. There have been suggestions that the discovery of fire and its use to cook our food is one of the factors that facilitated the development of larger brains (which are also energy-hungry) in humans.
Perhaps so. But what about the energy required to collect firewood? I'm guessing that it is/was largely done by women - possibly at the expense of the growth of their unborn and born children?
Males - as far as I can tell - went out and did the dangerous work of catching meat and then got to eat the major part of it without the energy output of cooking it. Presumably they are bigger than women because they get more food & expend less energy overall.
Nowadays all the energy comes from non-human sources, and the meat and vegs from industrialised processes, so overall we (developed nations) have high value food at low personal energy output. Our brains aren't growing any bigger so our bellies do so instead.
This is why eco-MRE's would need to be adjusted for the inactive, and also why slow cooking is good. Helps make less digestable and cheap found easier to digest and more tasty. Our ancestors weren't stupid with their stewpots, but modern man would no doubt object on many 'elf and safety grounds.
Back in the good'ol days of subsistence, poorer people would spend much time and energy growing and foraging for food and fuel. Men would probably spend more time labouring for their masters in the West, so women and kids left to do the foraging. Much time and effort spent though on the basics of surviving leaving less to do more interesting things. Also more vulnerable to diseases, and starvation. Get ill, can't work or forage, so starve and die. Life was tough.
Along came agriculture and the ability to grow more food more reliably and support larger populations, freeing up resources to do more interesting things like study. Civilisation advances, although 'greens' would seem to prefer a return to the Dark Ages of a subsistence lifestyle. The modern hunter gatherer would no longer need to prowl the aisles of a supermarket in search of a dangerous looking bogof, or if they're feeling really lazy, foraging online and getting their prey delivered.
Greens preach sustainability, but don't seem to understand it. We have 60m people wanting 2000 kcals a day. Locavore lifestyles simply can't support that, so we need industrial scale farming and GM to support our current population sizes. WW2 showed us we don't really have food security in the UK, even with 'dig for victory' and severe rationing. Especially if many of the green spaces that were previously turned into allotments have now been turned into housing, or supermarket car parks. So the 'greens' are nuts, unless they're Malthusians in which case their plans would have the desired effect of reducing the global population size.
Brains are more interesting. They may not be growing larger, but intelligence is increasing because we're freed from our subsistence lifestyle to spend time learning, if we choose to. The invention of the 'net means it's never been easier to educate ourselves, if we want. There are downsides to this, like us pesky sceptics asking our 'elite' awkward questions, like why are their energy and food security policies so crazy, and designed to divert money and control to them and not back to individuals?