Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of oil, gas and other non-renewable resource is inevitable. Coupled with
an increased competition from a growing global population increasing in
affl uence, it is likely that the import of such resources will eventually de-
cline for the UK as well as other industrialized nations [63].
Such a future scenario imply that the resource consumption per capita
will be reduced and thereby that the emergy needed for supporting labor is
reduced. However, it may also bring along transformations that are more
substantial in the organization of the national economy and all its sub-
systems, not least the mass food supply system, which at present uses 9%
of UK's petroleum products. In this perspective, the capacity of a system
to adapt to changes is a crucial part of its sustainability, and this charac-
teristic is not directly refl ected in the quantitative indicators of emergy
assessment and LCA.
1.6.4 LOCAL BASED BOX-SCHEME VERSUS NATIONAL-WIDE
SUPERMARKET DISTRIBUTION—RESILIENCE
The supermarket based distribution system has during the previous de-
cades been redesigned according to principles of Just-In-Time delivery
(JIT). These principles aim at reducing the storage need and storage ca-
pacity at every link in a production chain, such that a minimum of capital
investment is idle or in excess at any time. Less idle capital means fewer
costs and fewer environmental impacts. While JIT may decrease environ-
mental impacts per unit of produce for the particular system, as long as ev-
erything is running smoothly, it may compromise the system's resilience
as it becomes more vulnerable to disturbance and systemic risks. Systemic
risks include disruption in infrastructure supplying money, energy, fuel,
power, communications and IT or transport as well as pandemics and cli-
mate change [64,65,66]. As can be imagined any disturbance caused by
such events may quickly spread throughout the tightly connected network
[65,67]. A loss of IT and communication would make it impossible for
a national-wide JIT supply system to coordinate supplies [64]. A loss of
money would make it impossible to conduct transactions with customers.
A loss of fuel for transportation would results in large bulks of produce
