At 03:43 PM 10/8/2008 -0400, you wrote: >[Karl North:] > >| These initiatives are all good food for thought, but we need to >| bear in mind that Vermont is a special case. > >Yes, but so is Tompkins County.
Jon--I agree with your suggestion that we are positioned to be successful with the "Vermont model". ...part deleted... >So the question is whether a local farm cooperative of the kind described >in the article can hang on until the cost of fuel finally levels >the playing field by making Wal-Mart food more expensive than >locally produced food. And I wonder what this time framework will be? The problem is that Wal-Mart has an economy of scale not seen locally. However, things are going to change with the local Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wants to expand by 40,000 sq. ft. to become a Super Store, meaning that they would add a Wegmans-scale supermarket to the existing Everyhing-You-Could-Ever-Want-That-Is-Made-In-China store. (I know this as I am on the City of Ithaca Conservation Advisory Council and we are currently reviewing the environmental impacts of such an expansion.) Would they get on the local and organic band wagon? And if they did, how would this affect the truck farm industry in the Central Finger Lakes? GreenStar, Wegmans, Tops, Ludgate's and a host of other outlets are already involved in promoting local and organic or at least "natural" foods, so perhaps the expanded Wal-Mart would give a boost to the local food economy... assuming that anyone would want to sell to Wal-Mart? Lots of stuff going on. Tom ****************************************** Tom Shelley 118 E. Court St. Ithaca, NY 14850 607 342-0864 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Compost Educator and Sustainability Scion* What Does Zero Waste Mean? "If it cant be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned, or removed from production." Berkeley Zero Waste Resolution See http://www.cityofberkeley.info/council8/newsletter.pdf *noun: a shoot or bud of a plant, esp. one for planting or grafting _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
