I thought that the map in the Fast Company article were cropped, but the map from the original study seems to lack Hawai'i and Alaska, as well as Puerto Rico, American Somoa, Guam... and where else am I missing?
I don't love that last link, it makes me just give up, why did you let me down, sending me to run around? Honestly I could just cry, I guess this is goodbye, because your lie hurt me!
My takeaway from this is that the logistics network is very brittle and contains many weak points:
"A disruption to any of these [nine] counties [in California] may have ripple effects for the food supply chain of the entire country."
and
"... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The infrastructure along these waterways ... have not been overhauled since their construction in 1929. They represent a serious bottleneck ... If they were to fail entirely, then commodity transport and supply chains would be completely disrupted."
It would be interesting to know if the food logistics network of other countries have a similar scale-free topology with a handful of very important nodes and overlooked, but critical infrastructure. I'm guessing yes, they do.
> My takeaway from this is that the logistics network is very brittle and contains many weak points
Fortunately, this isn't true, or at least hasn't been for 15+ years.
> ... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
Only because the price is lower. Grain shipment is extremely price-sensitive! [1]:
> Prior to 2003, containers were mainly restricted to specialty crops, which would not fill a hold in a ship, and feed ingredients like corn gluten meal, bone and meat meal The containerization of grain in the US began to pick up significantly in 2004 because of the spread that emerged between backhaul container rates and bulk shipping. The rates for bulk shipping increased because of the strong demand for scrap metal.
> The North American consumer demand for imported Asia Pacific manufactured goods also surged between 2003 and 2008. Consequently, freight rates for containers on the westbound traffic lanes fell as the volume of empty containers returning to Asia became excessive. During this period, grain could be shipped in containers from Chicago at $35/40 per ton, while bulk rates for grain at the Gulf of Mexico were $60/70 per ton. This provided the incentive for commercial bulk grain shippers to begin arbitraging the freight and moving grain exports in containers.
The concentration of traffic is an interesting element of this.
River transport remains huge. It's already impacted by low water (which railroads love: more rail shipments). Possibly also high water affecting navigability via both current/navigation hazards and low bridge clearances.
Fresh produce is sensitive to logistic snags but aren't grains much more robust and thus able to better withstand delays caused by temporary infrastructure failures?
I don't think most Americans appreciate just how much of the food they consume originates in California. Not just California, but in 6 or 7 counties located in the San Joaquin valley. I grew up in the middle of it in Tulare County and even I don't grasp the multibillions of dollars agriculture brings in. In the event of some megadisaster which cause the valley to stop producing or something happens to the transportation infrastructure on a massive scale, there will be a lot of empty produce bins and grocery shelves in the US and they won't be quickly refilled.
A project idea I've toyed with is "Where does X come from?", which would show someone, to some approximation, where the things they buy and consume originated, and the path they took to get there, and where their waste goes. Mainly this is inspired by my own curiosity, but also desire to better understand the impact my decisions have on the world.
I haven't pursued it due to lack of time and expectation that acquiring and reducing the data would be a monumental effort, but this looks like a good source for "where does [food item] come from", and has some useful-sounding source databases for tracking other items.
Some other resources I'd want to include: water, sewer, trash, electric (at least where the lines are and nearby power generation), and gas.
A few days ago I was listening to an interview on the radio, and the man said that Spain had a very inefficient food supply chain becuase the food would travel across provinces. He said that if the provinces would be able to self supply about 80-90% of their own food that would reduce massively the CO2 footprint. He gave some numbers which I don't remember, but they were quite massive.
Texas alone has a bigger surface than Spain, I wonder how much pollutes the transport of the food alone and how much could be avoided by producing food locally. The whole thing seems pretty wasteful...
Yea, I've been curious about that with vertical farming. It's way less cost efficient but I'm wondering which is more efficient carbon-wise. It might be worth eating the cost to reduce emissions.
People would have to stop expecting to be able to eat all vegetables and fruits at all times. Going to be a hard sell, especially in the northern half of the US that doesn’t grow anything in winter.
A county in Delaware being on the top ten for food inflow seemed odd. I assume this must be including raw grain, because the only thing notable about that county is that it apparently is nothing but chicken coops[1].
Could it be because Delaware is a preferred location due to corporate tax laws?
Please note that in this case, this is a non-rhetorical question on my part. Transportation and tax shelters are out of my areas of interest. just wondering if the graphs may be of parent company post office box numbers instead of loading dock addresses.
I'm currently doing a literature review for a research project closely related to this exact topic. And they say reading HN is a waste of time! ;)
But seriously. This is a great example of what a lot of other research also points to: the growing vulnerability of the US food system to systemic existential risks due to geographic specialization, market consolidation, and decrease in network resilience of local food systems. This is important stuff. Glad to see food systems pop up here.
A lot of the midwest (or the great plains) is devoted to feed corn and corn for ethanol, wheat, and soybeans. It's not california where you'll find fields of lettuce, for example.
With that said, there's no shortage of small farms growing most anything that can be grown in the area, but they tend to not be exporting anything beyond the local farmers market.
> However, our estimates are for 2012, an extreme drought year in the Cornbelt. So, in another year, the network may look different. It’s possible that counties within the Cornbelt would show up as more critical in non-drought years. This is something that we hope to dig into in future work.
Have a look at Riverview LLP, one acre of land to grow food for one dairy cow each year. Plus crop rotation. Multiply by 15,000 cows in central Minnesota. https://www.riverviewllp.com/crop-production.html
I was surprised to find that my county (Harris, TX) was one of the nine counties "most central to the overall structure of the food supply network".
Not much farming happens in this county, nearly zero industrial farming. In the few spots of undeveloped land a few people have some cows, mostly for tax purposes. One more thing, Harris encompasses most of the greater Houston metropolitan area. It's mostly city and suburbs. So what gives?
"We did this by looking for counties with the largest number of connections to others"
Ok, well there's very little farming in the surrounding counties relative to California and the corn belt. We're quite a ways from the Rio Grande valley (which does have quite a bit of farming).
"At over 17 million tons of food, Los Angeles County received more food than any other county in 2012, our study year. It shipped out even more: 22 million tons."
I think that statement is backwards. The graphic shows Los Angeles with an OUTFLOW of 16.6b and an INFLOW of 21.9b.
Per-capita doesn't make sense in this case. This is about the total flow of food. It again wouldn't make sense to say that a small town in the middle of no where with say 100 people who have the highest per-capita food export when in total they aren't even a drop in the bucket in importance to somewhere in CA or the Midwest that is an agriculture power house and accounts for most of our total food production.
Much of this depends on data availability. I'd need to dig into the paper, but depending on reliance, USDA or SIC classifications by county (ZIP Code is also often available).
Data availability tends to drive much analysis and research.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
Direct link to paper:
"Food flows between counties in the United States"
Xiaowen Lin, Paul J Ruess, Landon Marston and Megan Konar
Published 26 July 2019. Environmental Research Letters.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab29ae
(Original link and title from: https://www.fastcompany.com/90422553/the-first-map-of-americ...)
And the map in question:
https://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/14/8/084011/downloadHRF...
Viewable online (above link downloads): https://imgur.com/gallery/E7eaf7l
[+] [-] ben174|6 years ago|reply
Even the "originals" are only 1020 × 1091. I'm not sure that counts as high resolution these days.
If your title says high-resolution and you fail that miserably maybe you need to rethink
[+] [-] jasonjayr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spraak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnurmine|6 years ago|reply
"A disruption to any of these [nine] counties [in California] may have ripple effects for the food supply chain of the entire country."
and
"... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The infrastructure along these waterways ... have not been overhauled since their construction in 1929. They represent a serious bottleneck ... If they were to fail entirely, then commodity transport and supply chains would be completely disrupted."
It would be interesting to know if the food logistics network of other countries have a similar scale-free topology with a handful of very important nodes and overlooked, but critical infrastructure. I'm guessing yes, they do.
[+] [-] OldHand2018|6 years ago|reply
Fortunately, this isn't true, or at least hasn't been for 15+ years.
> ... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
Only because the price is lower. Grain shipment is extremely price-sensitive! [1]:
> Prior to 2003, containers were mainly restricted to specialty crops, which would not fill a hold in a ship, and feed ingredients like corn gluten meal, bone and meat meal The containerization of grain in the US began to pick up significantly in 2004 because of the spread that emerged between backhaul container rates and bulk shipping. The rates for bulk shipping increased because of the strong demand for scrap metal.
> The North American consumer demand for imported Asia Pacific manufactured goods also surged between 2003 and 2008. Consequently, freight rates for containers on the westbound traffic lanes fell as the volume of empty containers returning to Asia became excessive. During this period, grain could be shipped in containers from Chicago at $35/40 per ton, while bulk rates for grain at the Gulf of Mexico were $60/70 per ton. This provided the incentive for commercial bulk grain shippers to begin arbitraging the freight and moving grain exports in containers.
[1] https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JTTs_2015031815114293.pdf
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
River transport remains huge. It's already impacted by low water (which railroads love: more rail shipments). Possibly also high water affecting navigability via both current/navigation hazards and low bridge clearances.
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sizzzzlerz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] retzkek|6 years ago|reply
I haven't pursued it due to lack of time and expectation that acquiring and reducing the data would be a monumental effort, but this looks like a good source for "where does [food item] come from", and has some useful-sounding source databases for tracking other items.
Some other resources I'd want to include: water, sewer, trash, electric (at least where the lines are and nearby power generation), and gas.
[+] [-] brozaman|6 years ago|reply
Texas alone has a bigger surface than Spain, I wonder how much pollutes the transport of the food alone and how much could be avoided by producing food locally. The whole thing seems pretty wasteful...
[+] [-] TACIXAT|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrower123|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussex_County,_Delaware#Econom...
[+] [-] tejtm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amatthew|6 years ago|reply
But seriously. This is a great example of what a lot of other research also points to: the growing vulnerability of the US food system to systemic existential risks due to geographic specialization, market consolidation, and decrease in network resilience of local food systems. This is important stuff. Glad to see food systems pop up here.
[+] [-] v77|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fotbr|6 years ago|reply
With that said, there's no shortage of small farms growing most anything that can be grown in the area, but they tend to not be exporting anything beyond the local farmers market.
[+] [-] cabaalis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drjasonharrison|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dajohnson89|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|6 years ago|reply
Not much farming happens in this county, nearly zero industrial farming. In the few spots of undeveloped land a few people have some cows, mostly for tax purposes. One more thing, Harris encompasses most of the greater Houston metropolitan area. It's mostly city and suburbs. So what gives?
"We did this by looking for counties with the largest number of connections to others"
Ok, well there's very little farming in the surrounding counties relative to California and the corn belt. We're quite a ways from the Rio Grande valley (which does have quite a bit of farming).
So this still doesn't make sense.
[+] [-] mogadsheu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SaintGhurka|6 years ago|reply
"At over 17 million tons of food, Los Angeles County received more food than any other county in 2012, our study year. It shipped out even more: 22 million tons."
I think that statement is backwards. The graphic shows Los Angeles with an OUTFLOW of 16.6b and an INFLOW of 21.9b.
[+] [-] ladberg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer00eyz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] madengr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggeter|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kodablah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bl4ckneon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
Data availability tends to drive much analysis and research.
[+] [-] arjie|6 years ago|reply