We should also be looking at what food we grow. I’ve always found it crazy that we import bananas from countries where rainforests are cut down for banana and palm oil plantations. There they blend unwanted bananas and foliage into livestock feeds, while we import Palm Kernel Extract as a cattle feed supplement.
By growing our own bananas, we not only get a staple food crop for less CO2 emissions, but we also provide farmers with an alternative source of cattle feed, reducing the demand for imports of products like Palm Kernel Extract that contribute to deforestation in other countries.
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I thought Australia only allowed sale of Australian grown bananas or something like that making bananas super expensive?
Home gardeners grow certain varieties of bananas in NZ, but I think we shouldn’t underestimate how many bananas we eat in NZ. I’d be pretty confident that it’s more than we have any hope of growing (but maybe we can supplement the supply?).
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Sure. Northern areas can grow many different varieties. I grow about 8 different types in the far north and they do very well as long as they are not smothered by kikuyu. https://www.tropicalfruitgrowers.nz/ has more info.
A few weeks ago while travelling on the intercity bus I saw a banana plantation just south of Whangarei.
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We can’t possibly grow everything in the supermarket shelves. We certainly can’t grow some basic ingredients like sugar.
I never said that. We should grow what we can when it makes sense, eg bananas and pineapple outdoors, papaya and mango under cover etc.
I don’t know how much sense it makes to grow things like papayas, mangoes, and bananas.
This article is pretty light on detail, it just vaguely outlines the problem, says we need to do better, and wraps up with “maybe more trains, idk?”
I’m not sure what the point was, to be honest.
Firstly, you should read the article more carefully as they put forward 3 ways to increase resilience for NZs food supply chains.
- Increase the use of rail and coastal shipping for freight, freeing up the reliance on an often vulnerable road network
- Decentralize processing factories and distribution centres
- Utilize new technology, such as aquaculture and vertical hydroponics, to reduce the reliance on certain specific regions for the bulk of our food production
Secondly, an article does not need to propose an answer to a problem to be a good article. Sometimes, bringing attention to a problem is a goal in and of itself.
Rail is a moronic idea if you want to increase resilience, it’s much easier to close a rail line, and much harder to divert freight than a road. We also have a lot more options as far as temporary solutions are concerned, just look at the temporary roadway that was built along SH1 around Kaikoura, or technology like the Bailey bridge.
As for the other technologies, they do little more than tell us they exist, with no analysis of how this would work, how viable it would be, or how much more expensive our food would be if we used them.
Overall, I feel no better informed after reading the article than I did before I read it, no shit a natural disaster would have an adverse effect on our food production.
Rail is just another option. When all freight is by road, it’s no better as a single slip will take a road out for months. The article is suggesting we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket.
The article sparked discussion. I think that’s a success. Not every article needs to solve the problem.
There’s very few places in NZ that have only one road to them, and those that do will likely not have a rail line to them.
That is not a reason to not diversify.
Uhh, what? The fact that the other option doesn’t exist is no excuse?
I’m going to summarise this comment chain so far:
Article: 93% of freight is moved by road, we should try to diversify
You: All this article does it highlight problems, what’s the point in that?
Other commenter: Highlighting problems is a point in and of itself, but they actually suggested many ways to improve the situation
You: Taking some freight on rail is “moronic” when we can build temporary road bridges when they get washed away
Other commenter: Rail is an option to add to the mix, the article is suggesting we do a mix of options
You: There’s no point in putting any freight on rail, since there are some places rail doesn’t go to
Other commenter: Just because rail doesn’t go everywhere doesn’t mean we can’t diversify some freight onto rail
You: The railway lines don’t exist so we can’t put freight on them
You are using strawman arguments and seem to be deliberately ignoring or misinterpreting the responses you get. This is a place for good faith discussion, if you’re not going to actually read the responses you’re replying to it would be better if you didn’t reply at all.
If a railway line is closed and the roads are open then you can just throw the freight onto trucks. I don’t understand how you read an article suggesting we diversify the network onto coastal shipping and rail, and think that means we should ban the current methods. But rail is also more resilient than roads because it’s raised out of water, no pot holes, crashes are rare (and almost always vehicle vs train, which can have rail operating again pretty quickly), less affected by slow traffic. Getting a larger portion of long-distance freight onto rail will also improve things for other road users, in terms of less traffic, and moving more heavy freight onto rail will also be a huge benefit in terms of pot-hole prevention.
The only argument against rail that I can think of is that it would require hubs for loading/unloading trucks for the first and last mile. But in terms of Auckland/Wellington transport rail seems like a no-brainer, when currently there are probably thousands of trucks making the trip each day.
Just because there’s lots of trucks it doesn’t mean that rail is going to be suitable. Just off the top of my head, they may not be near the rail line which requires trucks anyway or have tight deadlnes.
Sure, not all freight makes sense to go by rail. But rail is hugely underused in NZ.
That’s if you can find them, heavy trucks aren’t typically sitting around waiting for work.
