InLCA-LCM 2004

Rita Schenck · Post subject: **Importance of scale** Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 8:02 pm

Your approach to scale is very interesting. Do you have an ideas about how one might use your results to develop policy for sustainability? for example, should one be able to ship food locally using a biodiesel fuel, would this mean that the impacts of local food production would become lower than food shipped by sea? Have you considered the option of growing one's own food in home or neighborhood gardens?

Have you any ideas about optimal scale, as opposed to ecology of scale? Certainly one finds in manufacturing diseconomies of scale as well as economies of scale. When the manufacturing facility becomes too large, it becomes impossible to manage, thus less profitable. The analogous condition vis-a-vis the ecology of scale is when concentrated production leads to local or regional ecological devastation. Energy usage is of course not the only issue.
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Rita Schenck

Elmar Schlich · Post subject: **Re: Importance of scale** Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:10 am

1. Actually, we have two methodical results, which you can use for politics and advise. First, we see in all cases a more or less digressive relation between the specific energy intake and the number of produced food items. Secondly, we find some "break even point", pointing on a mimimum business size. In all cases, we would advise the farmers and distributers in a region to organize cooperations, because by this the mimimum business size is reached quite easy. Politics should support this.

2. The best way in all cases is digging your own garden and live from your own countryside. Unfortunately, in Germany as one of the most crowded country per square-km of the world (82,5 million people in a small country), this is not possible for the total amount of people. Please keep in mind, that only 100 to 150 years ago people were starving round here. So they left their country and went to US or Brasil, because they did not have enough food for themselves.

3. Biodiesel fuel does not change the energy consume, but changes of course the CO2 and primary energy data. It would be worthwile, to investigate the impact of increasing biodiesel consume. We think, a scenario (theoretical calculation) for that would be fine.

4. Of course, energy is not the only issue. But we think, it is one of the more important ones. As far as we know, nobody else has valid data about specific energy turnover on food items, so we concentrated on this topic. And: we have the CO2-release and the primary energy as well, knowing the energy turnover.

5. Regarding too large units, you are right. If you have an oversized food production with monocultures only, you find disadvantages, e.g. devastation, destruction of the countryside, ground-water problems and so on.

Michaela and Elmar Schlich

Rita Schenck · Post subject: **Re: Importance of scale** Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:36 pm

I am fascinated by your comment that there is a minimum size that can be reached quite easily by regional cooperatives. What size is this? Does density matter (e.g. production per square kilometer?) Could a single community support the right amount? In the US there is something called community-supported agriculture, in which residents subscribe to the output of a farm, and the farmer provides produce either seasonally or year-round. The outcome is that the food moves a very small distance between farm and table, and the farmer makes much more money on a small farm. One farmer in my community has sales of $15,000 per acre.

I have thought for a long time, that the appropriate question about size and global sustainability is not whether large organizations should exist, but rather which organizations should be large. For example, it is clear that some organizations should be multinational (telecommunications, for example). I have always thought that agricultural organizations should be relatively small, local organizations. Your work is making me re-think that idea.
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Rita Schenck

Elmar Schlich · Post subject: **break even point** Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:02 am

Rita:

Indeed, we found some "break even points" on our food examples.

On fruit juices, we need at least 1,000 - 2,000 tons/year of fruit input to the squeezing facility. On lamb meat, we think about 7,500 - 10,000 kg/year processed meat. Regarding high quality vine, bottled at the place of origin, we believe at a break even of some 20,000 bottles per year, but this result has not been published yet, because we have to validate this by scientific means.

All these numbers are easy to get for local heros, because we found in all cases (juices, lamb meat, vine) data from regional cooperatives inside Germany, which are competitive in terms of energy. That means, those cooperatives do meet the "Ecology of Scale". On the other hand, we find actors, which do not talk to each other, because they don´t want to or because they don´t know about the chances. That´s quite often a social problem in some communities.

But, to be honest: Our results are valid for Germany and for the investigated food items, only. For the US and for different food items, it would be necessary to research all the local, regional, continental and global subsystems, which are parts of comparable food chains.

Who could do that studies for the US? We could not, of course! But we would like to cooperate and to support such research!

Best regards
Micha and Elmar

Rita Schenck · Post subject: **Re: break even point** Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 3:17 pm

Elmar and Micha:

I think it might be possible for us to do some of this research-- I would like to investigate collaboration with you. As you know, farms in the USA are quite a bit larger than those in Europe-- and often are of a size such as you describe as the breakeven point. Cooperatives may not even be needed in some cases.
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Rita Schenck