I'm lucky to live near a town that provides niche lifestyle businesses (shops that sell hats, pens, jackets, soaps, spirits and small furniture), but for larger/more mundane things, such as larger...
I'm lucky to live near a town that provides niche lifestyle businesses (shops that sell hats, pens, jackets, soaps, spirits and small furniture), but for larger/more mundane things, such as larger furniture, kitchen items (pans, pots), I'm out of luck.
It is increasingly hard, as the article said, to find great quality items, even at incredibly elevated prices, because the distinction between faux high-quality brands and actual good products has been blurred. I could be looking at a jacket by a formerly reputable brand, only to realise it is now made of inferior materials, by less skilled labourers, in appalling work conditions. All for a premium price. Not that it has ever been one, but price is even less of an indicator of quality now.
Since local manufacturers have wilted down to a tenth (if lucky) of what they used to be, they now have to source machinery/materials that is almost bespoke to them at incredibly high cost, which is naturally passed down to the customer. I don't mind paying 70 GBP for a cast iron frying pan, but for stainless steel pots and pans, I cannot justify 100 GBP for a single saucepan when a whole set made of steel of comparable quality costs a fraction of that.
It's sadly a bit of a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where if more people who could support local manufacturers would indeed opt for their products, then prices would go down across the board, but it is perfectly understandable to not want to overpay massively for every single item in your household.
One of the things that a carbon tax will do is reverse some of those price discrepancies. If world-spanning supply chains have a financial cost in line with the carbon impact of manufacturing...
One of the things that a carbon tax will do is reverse some of those price discrepancies. If world-spanning supply chains have a financial cost in line with the carbon impact of manufacturing those pans halfway around the world, maybe the locally made pans will be more price-competitive with the whole set made abroad. And then it won't only be people who can afford the current price premium to buy local, it'll be the individually rational choice to buy from retailers that make things locally from local materials.
Though it will likely also cause some change in patterns of consumption, yeah? Maybe people won't have a whole set of stainless steel pots and pans with three different sizes of frying pans, a sauce pot, a stock pot, etc. They'll have a smaller set of more broadly useful things just because it's not worth buying things that don't really serve the purpose. A pot and a frying pan, rather than a 12 piece set.
I sure hope patterns of consumption change. Instead of many pans, I've gone down to four, plus a frying pan, and I can't say I've been horribly affected by it. Nowadays there seems to be a trend...
I sure hope patterns of consumption change. Instead of many pans, I've gone down to four, plus a frying pan, and I can't say I've been horribly affected by it. Nowadays there seems to be a trend towards "unitaskers" in all fields, not only cookery, and I'd like to see it extinguished, as it is not sustainable to keep selling, say, "banana slicers" or whatever is advertised on TikTok at the moment.
How I wish to have more lifestyle businesses near me and be done with the aggressive trend altogether. This weekend I bought meat and veg at a farmers market, apples out of a farmers truck on the...
How I wish to have more lifestyle businesses near me and be done with the aggressive trend altogether.
This weekend I bought meat and veg at a farmers market, apples out of a farmers truck on the side of the road, and lobsters direct from wholesalers whose main business is packing them for international trade ($8/lb!!). That felt nice.
Then I had to go to the supermarket and pay $14.58 for 8 litres (2 US Gallon) of milk, plus $6 a pound of terrible quality butter, and that felt bad.
So many pieces of my household, I don't even want to think about how to replace them with not-crap.
Be aware that farmer’s markets run their own scam of buying bulk produce and selling it at a high markup. The giveaway is selling produce that is out of season for the region you’re in. There’s...
Be aware that farmer’s markets run their own scam of buying bulk produce and selling it at a high markup. The giveaway is selling produce that is out of season for the region you’re in. There’s also specific boxes and containers to look for as well, but I always fine the grocery store strawberries sold in early May to be an obvious tell.
Some of them do, some of them don't. But it's a hard line to draw. The farmer's market itself generally isn't administered by the farmers; it handles the administration of the weekly event,...
Some of them do, some of them don't. But it's a hard line to draw. The farmer's market itself generally isn't administered by the farmers; it handles the administration of the weekly event, renting spaces to vendors, holding insurance and permits for everything, etc. They don't generally vet the farmers for what they're selling or the provenance of the produce. It's a bit of caveat emptor when the shopper walks up to the stand.
Aww that's totally bogus dude. :( there was one vendor selling wild blueberries and I'm thinking, huh the wild ones near me just started flowering..... Strawberries could technically be greenhouse...
Aww that's totally bogus dude. :( there was one vendor selling wild blueberries and I'm thinking, huh the wild ones near me just started flowering.....
Strawberries could technically be greenhouse though?
That'd be pretty awful of them to lie to people like that
Greenhouse produce can still be local. I've been looking into setting one up for myself and it's a whole mess I never knew about. You need to heat a greenhouse if it's too cold for the plants to...
Greenhouse produce can still be local.
I've been looking into setting one up for myself and it's a whole mess I never knew about. You need to heat a greenhouse if it's too cold for the plants to survive, so how are they producing that heat? Geothermal with a fan? Heat generated from a compost heap? Regular electric heaters? Solar heat stored in barrels water? (That one isn't likely to work if it tends to be cloudy.)
Still local, but it might be something not great for the environment. I always assumed that greenhouses stay warm because...they're greenhouses. Nope, a simple one can end up being colder inside than it is outside.
The stands that stick to veggies that grow in the winter may not need to use hear heat at all, those things are happy if you can keep the frost off. Carrots supposedly taste better after a freeze - mine didn't make it last winter so I couldn't say.
Here’s a short article on spotting boxes: https://fedbythefarm.com/how-to-spot-fake-farmers-at-the-farmers-market/ A lot will dump their produce into other containers to make it look like they...
I'm lucky to live near a town that provides niche lifestyle businesses (shops that sell hats, pens, jackets, soaps, spirits and small furniture), but for larger/more mundane things, such as larger furniture, kitchen items (pans, pots), I'm out of luck.
It is increasingly hard, as the article said, to find great quality items, even at incredibly elevated prices, because the distinction between faux high-quality brands and actual good products has been blurred. I could be looking at a jacket by a formerly reputable brand, only to realise it is now made of inferior materials, by less skilled labourers, in appalling work conditions. All for a premium price. Not that it has ever been one, but price is even less of an indicator of quality now.
Since local manufacturers have wilted down to a tenth (if lucky) of what they used to be, they now have to source machinery/materials that is almost bespoke to them at incredibly high cost, which is naturally passed down to the customer. I don't mind paying 70 GBP for a cast iron frying pan, but for stainless steel pots and pans, I cannot justify 100 GBP for a single saucepan when a whole set made of steel of comparable quality costs a fraction of that.
It's sadly a bit of a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where if more people who could support local manufacturers would indeed opt for their products, then prices would go down across the board, but it is perfectly understandable to not want to overpay massively for every single item in your household.
One of the things that a carbon tax will do is reverse some of those price discrepancies. If world-spanning supply chains have a financial cost in line with the carbon impact of manufacturing those pans halfway around the world, maybe the locally made pans will be more price-competitive with the whole set made abroad. And then it won't only be people who can afford the current price premium to buy local, it'll be the individually rational choice to buy from retailers that make things locally from local materials.
Though it will likely also cause some change in patterns of consumption, yeah? Maybe people won't have a whole set of stainless steel pots and pans with three different sizes of frying pans, a sauce pot, a stock pot, etc. They'll have a smaller set of more broadly useful things just because it's not worth buying things that don't really serve the purpose. A pot and a frying pan, rather than a 12 piece set.
I sure hope patterns of consumption change. Instead of many pans, I've gone down to four, plus a frying pan, and I can't say I've been horribly affected by it. Nowadays there seems to be a trend towards "unitaskers" in all fields, not only cookery, and I'd like to see it extinguished, as it is not sustainable to keep selling, say, "banana slicers" or whatever is advertised on TikTok at the moment.
How I wish to have more lifestyle businesses near me and be done with the aggressive trend altogether.
This weekend I bought meat and veg at a farmers market, apples out of a farmers truck on the side of the road, and lobsters direct from wholesalers whose main business is packing them for international trade ($8/lb!!). That felt nice.
Then I had to go to the supermarket and pay $14.58 for 8 litres (2 US Gallon) of milk, plus $6 a pound of terrible quality butter, and that felt bad.
So many pieces of my household, I don't even want to think about how to replace them with not-crap.
Be aware that farmer’s markets run their own scam of buying bulk produce and selling it at a high markup. The giveaway is selling produce that is out of season for the region you’re in. There’s also specific boxes and containers to look for as well, but I always fine the grocery store strawberries sold in early May to be an obvious tell.
Some of them do, some of them don't. But it's a hard line to draw. The farmer's market itself generally isn't administered by the farmers; it handles the administration of the weekly event, renting spaces to vendors, holding insurance and permits for everything, etc. They don't generally vet the farmers for what they're selling or the provenance of the produce. It's a bit of caveat emptor when the shopper walks up to the stand.
Aww that's totally bogus dude. :( there was one vendor selling wild blueberries and I'm thinking, huh the wild ones near me just started flowering.....
Strawberries could technically be greenhouse though?
That'd be pretty awful of them to lie to people like that
Greenhouse produce can still be local.
I've been looking into setting one up for myself and it's a whole mess I never knew about. You need to heat a greenhouse if it's too cold for the plants to survive, so how are they producing that heat? Geothermal with a fan? Heat generated from a compost heap? Regular electric heaters? Solar heat stored in barrels water? (That one isn't likely to work if it tends to be cloudy.)
Still local, but it might be something not great for the environment. I always assumed that greenhouses stay warm because...they're greenhouses. Nope, a simple one can end up being colder inside than it is outside.
The stands that stick to veggies that grow in the winter may not need to use hear heat at all, those things are happy if you can keep the frost off. Carrots supposedly taste better after a freeze - mine didn't make it last winter so I couldn't say.
Here’s a short article on spotting boxes: https://fedbythefarm.com/how-to-spot-fake-farmers-at-the-farmers-market/
A lot will dump their produce into other containers to make it look like they aren’t using bulk produce.
If you have 22 minutes this video covers the topic well: https://youtu.be/YYwB63YslbA?si=llF4t8hZvuumhqfG
The other thing I tend to see at farmer’s markets are MLM vendors and faux-artisan crafts.