The book does sound fascinating--I love big supply-chain or or history threads that trace a very specific thing (like salt, or garbage).
You set up an either/or dichotomy between the size of the home fridge and eating local foods and I need to say that isn't necessarily the ideological divide you make it.
For me eating local and growing a fair amount of produce and a lot of berries means having refrigerator and freezer space to store things until I can process them. Right now I'm in the season that's filling my full-sized freezer in the garage with rhubarb and berries, and it's still holding the last of the tomatillo crop I didn't turn into salsa verde last fall due to a kitchen remodeling project. Those things will likely get turned into jams and salsas either before or right about the time the zucchini starts pouring off the vine and I make decisions about shredding/freezing for future zucchini bread and fritters or making zucchini pickles. The tomatoes will be showing up then. This is my first year growing 3 varieties of soy for edamame and I'm not sure where they'll fit into the cycle, ditto the Brussels sprouts. The greens I grow in two bins are producing salad almost faster than we can eat it.
I walk to the farmers' market and bike to a couple of local farm stands every week for things I don't grow. I live in a fairly productive agriculture area (western Washington); if it isn't grown right around here it probably grows within 200 miles or so in the warmer farmlands of eastern Washington (and yes, I'm sure cold storage is involved in bringing those items to me). It isn't the city's density that makes the smaller food footprint possible--it's the growing region you're in.
This is how I grew up, with a large family garden, a ton of home food preservation, and a fridge and freezer in the garage to manage all of that and the meat my dad brought home during hunting season. Unlike my mom I work full-time and can't always process the food the day it needs to be picked. I make a ton of soup and freeze it ahead to have meals ready without cooking on busy days--another way of preserving veggies when they're in season.
I have solar panels on the roof so the same sun that's helping my veggies and berries grow is helping preserve them in the cold. My husband and I both bike for transportation when we're picking up things from the store, which is always going to be a part of our eating. I'm not going to the ocean to produce my own salt or growing beets for sugar or fermenting homemade vinegar so being more locally grounded in my food supply still requires that interdependency with larger systems.
I think you're right in that we should pay attention to where we can scrub carbon out of our systems. I don't think my home fridge/freezer are the biggest part of that problem. Decarbonizing the transportation system directly will benefit our food supply chain along with every other supply chain, including the one that brought my bikes to local shops so I could buy them there.
Thank you Barb. You are not alone in making this point that big fridges can be useful! Even our own freezer, which used to only store martini glasses, has been used for food since the pandemic when we couldn't shop every day.
Would be interesting to know what the carbon difference would be between the cold chain (items on the outside wall; vegetables, fruit, meat, and dairy) and the items that are processed in the middle isles?
It'd be useful to find out what proportion of the cold chain is already electrified or could easily be electrified. Those parts, home refrigerators, store coolers, cold storage warehouses, etc. will produce lower CO2 emissions as renewables generate more of our electricity.
I know from experience that finding a small fridge that doesn't cost a fortune and that uses less electricity than a big fridge is difficult.
I suspect that fridges would be much like houses. The smaller it is the less efficient it is. One big reason for this is because the ratio of external surface to Interior volume worsens as you get smaller. Thermal Mass also plays a role all of this varies a lot depending on how full you keep your fridge. The external surface area to internal volume ratio is why apartment buildings, row houses Etc are so much more efficient than detached houses.
If you want to find the most energy efficient fridges or appliances in general best bet is to look into resources for off-grid homes. Making/harvesting your own energy is way more expensive than buying it off the grid so people who do that have a vested interest in having incredibly efficient appliances.
The book does sound fascinating--I love big supply-chain or or history threads that trace a very specific thing (like salt, or garbage).
You set up an either/or dichotomy between the size of the home fridge and eating local foods and I need to say that isn't necessarily the ideological divide you make it.
For me eating local and growing a fair amount of produce and a lot of berries means having refrigerator and freezer space to store things until I can process them. Right now I'm in the season that's filling my full-sized freezer in the garage with rhubarb and berries, and it's still holding the last of the tomatillo crop I didn't turn into salsa verde last fall due to a kitchen remodeling project. Those things will likely get turned into jams and salsas either before or right about the time the zucchini starts pouring off the vine and I make decisions about shredding/freezing for future zucchini bread and fritters or making zucchini pickles. The tomatoes will be showing up then. This is my first year growing 3 varieties of soy for edamame and I'm not sure where they'll fit into the cycle, ditto the Brussels sprouts. The greens I grow in two bins are producing salad almost faster than we can eat it.
I walk to the farmers' market and bike to a couple of local farm stands every week for things I don't grow. I live in a fairly productive agriculture area (western Washington); if it isn't grown right around here it probably grows within 200 miles or so in the warmer farmlands of eastern Washington (and yes, I'm sure cold storage is involved in bringing those items to me). It isn't the city's density that makes the smaller food footprint possible--it's the growing region you're in.
This is how I grew up, with a large family garden, a ton of home food preservation, and a fridge and freezer in the garage to manage all of that and the meat my dad brought home during hunting season. Unlike my mom I work full-time and can't always process the food the day it needs to be picked. I make a ton of soup and freeze it ahead to have meals ready without cooking on busy days--another way of preserving veggies when they're in season.
I have solar panels on the roof so the same sun that's helping my veggies and berries grow is helping preserve them in the cold. My husband and I both bike for transportation when we're picking up things from the store, which is always going to be a part of our eating. I'm not going to the ocean to produce my own salt or growing beets for sugar or fermenting homemade vinegar so being more locally grounded in my food supply still requires that interdependency with larger systems.
I think you're right in that we should pay attention to where we can scrub carbon out of our systems. I don't think my home fridge/freezer are the biggest part of that problem. Decarbonizing the transportation system directly will benefit our food supply chain along with every other supply chain, including the one that brought my bikes to local shops so I could buy them there.
Thank you Barb. You are not alone in making this point that big fridges can be useful! Even our own freezer, which used to only store martini glasses, has been used for food since the pandemic when we couldn't shop every day.
And don’t forget the frozen dinner.
Would be interesting to know what the carbon difference would be between the cold chain (items on the outside wall; vegetables, fruit, meat, and dairy) and the items that are processed in the middle isles?
It'd be useful to find out what proportion of the cold chain is already electrified or could easily be electrified. Those parts, home refrigerators, store coolers, cold storage warehouses, etc. will produce lower CO2 emissions as renewables generate more of our electricity.
I know from experience that finding a small fridge that doesn't cost a fortune and that uses less electricity than a big fridge is difficult.
I suspect that fridges would be much like houses. The smaller it is the less efficient it is. One big reason for this is because the ratio of external surface to Interior volume worsens as you get smaller. Thermal Mass also plays a role all of this varies a lot depending on how full you keep your fridge. The external surface area to internal volume ratio is why apartment buildings, row houses Etc are so much more efficient than detached houses.
If you want to find the most energy efficient fridges or appliances in general best bet is to look into resources for off-grid homes. Making/harvesting your own energy is way more expensive than buying it off the grid so people who do that have a vested interest in having incredibly efficient appliances.