[FRIAM] Good news for Nick re: virus
Gary Schiltz
gary at naturesvisualarts.com
Mon Jun 15 12:43:29 EDT 2020
Now that I've lived in Ecuador for over a decade, it seems strange to think
of buying milk in liquid form, especially that which can spoil quickly.
Here, the main form of milk that the consumer sees is packaged in one-liter
boxes (like wine is increasingly sold worldwide), and it is not
refrigerated and has a shelf life of about six months. Equally common is
dehydrated milk, which must have a shelf life of over a year. I don't know
if the American model is more or less efficient, since the tradeoff in
refrigeration and space costs in the supermarkets doesn't incur the costs
associated with dehydration. But the supply chain must be much less
resilient.
On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 11:28 AM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Dairy producers are dumping thousands of gallons of milk every day. In
> Wisconsin, 50% of the state’s dairy products have nowhere to go
> <https://www.cbs58.com/news/not-a-good-feeling-covid-19-taking-a-toll-on-wisconsin-dairy-farmers>
> while typical buyers such as schools and restaurants remain shut down
> and unable to purchase milk and cheese.
>
>
>
> In Pennsylvania, where schools buy up to 40% of dairy sales by volume, the
> pandemic has beleaguered an already-stressed industry
> <https://www.pennlive.com/business/2020/04/crying-about-spilled-milk-coronavirus-pandemic-is-just-what-the-doctor-didnt-order-for-states-dairy-farms.html>
> that lost 470 farms in 2019. Some large dairies have started donating
> milk directly to food banks
> <https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/05/25/efforts-underway-to-get-food-that-was-going-to-be-dumped-from-us-farms-to-the-needy/>
> rather than dumping it, but this has taken months to happen with the
> help of nonprofit intermediaries. Such arrangements are patches, not
> systemic fixes for gaps in a brittle supply chain.
>
>
>
> *Supermarkets can’t sell all the milk*
>
> Milk waste and donations are signs that supply chains lack resilience—the
> ability to bounce back from stresses, the way a rubber band returns to its
> normal shape after being stretched. Milk dumping is more a reflection of
> broken supply chains than of trends in supply or demand. The fact that the
> U.S. has too much milk for some places and too little for others highlights
> weaknesses of conventional food supply chains amid shocks such as COVID-19.
>
> *One farm, one economy*
>
>
>
> How can this system be rewired to make it more adaptable?
>
>
>
> Here in New Jersey, farms are the fourth-smallest
> <https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/fnlo0220.pdf>
> in the United States, averaging 76 acres. The Garden State’s dairy
> sector is particularly small, making up only 50 farms and ranking 44th of
> 50 states in total milk production
> <https://www.americandairy.com/dairy-farms/dairy-facts/state-stats.stml>.
> But despite their small operations, *we see New Jersey’s local
> entrepreneurial farmers <http://www.honeybrookorganicfarm.com/> as models
> of a game-changing strategy.*
>
>
>
> Rather than selling their milk to large dairy processing companies, these vertically
> structured local farms <https://doublebrookfarm.com/> raise cows, process
> milk and other foods, and sell them directly to consumers at farm-operated
> markets and restaurants. Unsold items return to farms as feed or fertilizer.
>
>
>
> This system is highly efficient, even during the current pandemic, because
> farmers and their customers represent the entire supply chain. *Customer
> demand for locally produced food is surging throughout New Jersey
> <https://njmonthly.com/articles/eat-drink/table-hopping/farms-csas-coronavirus-nj/> and
> the United States
> <https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/31/coronavirus-demand-for-local-farms-157538>*
> .
>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200615/cb6f67d0/attachment.html>
More information about the Friam
mailing list