An Economy of Overfed Middlemen

Re:An Economy of Overfed Middlemen by zwieback on Monday July 25, 2022 @02:29PM (#32228794)

Farmers' markets are great, yes, as entertainment for wealthy consumers with spare time, me being one of those. As a sales channel they are extremely inefficient and all told probably bad for the environment.

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Re:An Economy of Overfed Middlemen by 8note on Monday July 25, 2022 @05:48PM (#32231375)

As a sales mechanism for CSA boxes they aren't too bad

The efficiency is dependent on what you're measuring - food per land area? Food per energy input? Energy output per energy input?

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Re:An Economy of Overfed Middlemen by zwieback on Monday July 25, 2022 @06:10PM (#32231597)

I was thinking of total energy (and maybe something like CO2) per food on the customer's table, including the waste that's produced.

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Re:An Economy of Overfed Middlemen by mariusor on Tuesday July 26, 2022 @05:21AM (#32236052)

For me personally it doesn't tract that reducing the supply chain between producer and consumer to the maximum will result in more energy expenditure:

The supplier has one trip to make to sell their current stock.

The consumer has one trip to make to buy multiple items that they're interested in (since this is a market).

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Re:An Economy of Overfed Middlemen by framperz on Monday August 01, 2022 @02:58PM (#32310598)

Great quote on that from Vaclav Smil's new book: " each greenhouse-grown, supermarket-bought tomato has the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel embedded in production"

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