Root Cellars, so [s]Hot[/s] Cool right Now

[Choada_Boy]

IT'S PEOPLE!!!!

 

[JayB]

Never mind the economic aspects of keeping money in the community vs. sending it off to your favorite multi-national! Local food is for stupid hipsters, just like fixies and skinny jeans.

 

The argument in favor of digging for ore beneath your home and fabricating a car from metal that you smelt yourself is equally compelling. Ditto for drilling your own fillings vs sending the money out of your household by paying a dentist to do it for you, etc, etc.

 

 

hmmm...buy locally produced food or growing a bit of lettuce in your own yard = drilling your own fillings for you. well sounds like you're convinced! interesting opinion you have there.

 

There are all kinds of perfectly satisfactory reasons for growing your own food or buying from the left-handed vegan pacifist rooptop collective. Economic and environmental benefits aren't amongst them.

 

That'd be like me justifying my fly-fishing habbit by claiming that doing so saves money. I'd estimate that the price of the fish I've kept over the years somewhere between $500 and $1,000 dollars a pound. Doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons for me to fly-fish, but it'd be silly and delusional to pretend that doing so had anything but non-economic benefits.

 

 

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

There are all kinds of perfectly satisfactory reasons for growing your own food or buying from the left-handed vegan pacifist rooptop collective. Economic and environmental benefits aren't amongst them.

 

Clearly all home gardens are exactly the same

[prole]

While eating cat shit from the litter box has certain social and nutritional limitations, the economic benefits can't be beat!

[olyclimber]

Well perhaps you're thinking of a different "economic benefit" than I am. For you the benefit is another coin in the pocket of a multinational Corp. For me the benefit is keeping money in the local economy.

[Hugh Conway]

Well perhaps you're thinking of a different "economic benefit" than I am. For you the benefit is another coin in the pocket of a multinational Corp. For me the benefit is keeping money in the local economy.

 

jesus man, think of the extra money you'd have to spray on the internet with if you shopped at MalWart!

[Choada_Boy]

Here's the REAL evidence that eating locally has economic benefits.

[JayB]

Well perhaps you're thinking of a different "economic benefit" than I am. For you the benefit is another coin in the pocket of a multinational Corp. For me the benefit is keeping money in the local economy.

 

That's an important psychological benefit for quite a few people.

 

Where do you draw the geographic line between local purchases that will hurt the economy? Do you also factor in the geographic origin of all of the inputs?

 

Would a guy food in Eastern Washington using a John Deere tractor fabricated in the US, burning petroleum sourced from California, and shipped to market on a US-made vehicle get a higher local score than someone in Mount Vernon who used japanese tractors, powered everything with imported diesel, and shipped his produce to market in a Japanese trailer behind a Prius?

[olyclimber]

Here's the REAL evidence that eating locally has economic benefits.

 

The market will never support this boutique

[Choada_Boy]

Would a guy food in Eastern Washington using a John Deere tractor fabricated in the US, burning petroleum sourced from California, and shipped to market on a US-made vehicle get a higher local score than someone in Mount Vernon who used japanese tractors, powered everything with imported diesel, and shipped his produce to market in a Japanese trailer behind a Prius?

 

Maybe.

[JayB]

I grow most of my own vegetables and fertilize them with the compost from garden waste. I also use organic nitrogen fertilizer that is made locally. I notice almost no change in my water bill. This year I picked nearly 100 ears of corn, fresh lettuce and spinach for 7 months, 12 months worth of green beans, dozens of Jalapenos, dozens of Bell peppers, and 6 100 pound pumpkins (the kids wanted the giant breed for Halloween, normally we grow Cinderellas).

 

Store bought produce flat sucks compared to my fresh home grown veggies. Plus I find gardening relaxing.

 

 

 

We (my wife) grow stuff in the yard too - but when you factor in the cost of hauling topsoil to the yard, irrigating with water piped in through a municipal treatment and distribution network, the trips to buy seeds, etc, etc, the process is a gajilliion times more expensive and resource-intensive than the production processes used by even the word's worst production-farmer. Organic or otherwise. Were it otherwise, there'd be no commercial farms.

 

Hell - when we were living in the middle of nowhere in NZ at virtually every meal we were eating produce grown in our backyard, out of a garden that was fertilized by the innards and other non-filet worthy bits of the large wild-trout I was catching...out of gin clear spring-fed water that had been percolating through volcanic layers that had purified it to optical perfection, on single-barbles hooks via flies that I'd tied with my own hands. Locavore perfection.

 

Of course - our plane tickets alone cost a fortune, we burned enough fuel to fuel an African village for years just getting there, I was driving at least 50 miles round-trip to get to the said trout, and I probably spent at least $300 dollars on tying supplies alone - so the entire enterprise behind every "locavore" meal was really a shameless orgy of unnecessary consumption motivated by nothing other than our desire to enjoy life as much as possible before we go to our entropic rewards.

 

All of the dispassionate analysis out there confirms the same for the entire "locavore" phenomenon. Eat local and/or grow your own stuff if that makes you happy. That should be enough.

 

 

[JayB]

Would a guy food in Eastern Washington using a John Deere tractor fabricated in the US, burning petroleum sourced from California, and shipped to market on a US-made vehicle get a higher local score than someone in Mount Vernon who used japanese tractors, powered everything with imported diesel, and shipped his produce to market in a Japanese trailer behind a Prius?

 

Maybe.

 

Thinking that locally sourced bio-diesel usage could be the tie-breaker.

 

 

[Choada_Boy]

I'm thinking of the work/energy theorem. Which scenario increases entropy the least?

[Hugh Conway]

We (my wife) grow stuff in the yard too - but when you factor in the cost of hauling topsoil to the yard, irrigating with water piped in through a municipal treatment and distribution network, the trips to buy seeds, etc, etc, the process is a gajilliion times more expensive and resource-intensive than the production processes used by even the word's worst production-farmer. Organic or otherwise. Were it otherwise, there'd be no commercial farms.

 

Uh, that's actually more efficient than the worlds worst farms, but don't let that stop you.

[olyclimber]

Would a guy food in Eastern Washington using a John Deere tractor fabricated in the US, burning petroleum sourced from California, and shipped to market on a US-made vehicle get a higher local score than someone in Mount Vernon who used japanese tractors, powered everything with imported diesel, and shipped his produce to market in a Japanese trailer behind a Prius?

 

Maybe.

 

Are you using real data here or is this idle speculation that supports your point?

[Choada_Boy]

Yes. Whichever makes me look like I know everything.

[JayB]

Would a guy food in Eastern Washington using a John Deere tractor fabricated in the US, burning petroleum sourced from California, and shipped to market on a US-made vehicle get a higher local score than someone in Mount Vernon who used japanese tractors, powered everything with imported diesel, and shipped his produce to market in a Japanese trailer behind a Prius?

 

Maybe.

 

Are you using real data here or is this idle speculation that supports your point?

 

Just trying to understand how you define what constitutes a local purchase that helps the economy vs a non-local purchase that hurts it.

 

 

[prole]

Is flying back and forth to New Zealand and commuting 50 miles to a fishing hole always going to be factored into the "local" equation?

 

Whatever. As long as "low, low prices" hide the true costs that are hidden by externalizing pollution, rapid resource depletion, environmental degradation, dependency on corporate intellectual property, and all the myriad real costs associated with a failing model your math might work.

[JayB]

I'm thinking of the work/energy theorem. Which scenario increases entropy the least?

 

I like it.

 

Nothing more objective than that.

 

If you aren't hashing together the blueprints for Entropos, LLC - the green certifying company to end *all* green-certifying companies right now, you're doing both your bank account and the planet a grave, grave disservice....

[Hugh Conway]

Whatever. As long as "low, low prices" hide the true costs that are hidden by externalizing pollution, rapid resource depletion, environmental degradation, dependency on corporate intellectual property, and all the myriad real costs associated with a failing model your math might work.

 

Don't forget the medical cartel that funds his family!

[Hugh Conway]

I'm still trying to figure out, aside from money, anyone would ever aspire to ape Economists. It has to be the single dullest group of people on the planet. Not a surprise they favor stripers, heliskiing, and shitty Zagat eateries

[JayB]

Is flying back and forth to New Zealand and commuting 50 miles to a fishing hole always going to be factored into the "local" equation?

 

Whatever. As long as "low, low prices" hide the true costs that are hidden by externalizing pollution, rapid resource depletion, environmental degradation, dependency on corporate intellectual property, and all the myriad real costs associated with a failing model your math might work.

 

Depends on how important the psychological benefits of harboring a delusion that you're consuming fewer resources - and thereby conferring untold economic and environmental benefits on the rest of mankind (who should *really* show you the proper deference and gratitude at whenever you mention your shopping habbits) - is for whoever is doing the math.

 

Dispensing with the ludicrous conceits about the larger benefits of eating backyard veggies, etc didn't make me enjoy my meals any less.

[Hugh Conway]

Dispensing with the ludicrous conceits about the larger benefits of eating backyard veggies, etc didn't make me enjoy my meals any less.

 

you wouldn't have those farm veggies without massive federal subsidies and underpricing of water

[JayB]

Whatever. As long as "low, low prices" hide the true costs that are hidden by externalizing pollution, rapid resource depletion, environmental degradation, dependency on corporate intellectual property, and all the myriad real costs associated with a failing model your math might work.

 

Don't forget the medical cartel that funds his family!

 

Indeed.

 

Every single person who works in the health-care industry in any capacity should raise a glass to last year's health care bill for abolishing any hope of introducing price transparency or competition into that sector.

 

 

[JayB]

Dispensing with the ludicrous conceits about the larger benefits of eating backyard veggies, etc didn't make me enjoy my meals any less.

 

you wouldn't have those farm veggies without massive federal subsidies and underpricing of water

 

There'd be plenty - they just wouldn't be grown in the middle of a desert.

 

Ag-subsidies, including irrigation subsidies, have done more to hose local producers around the world than any other single factor.