Shifts and Devices

The limits of ‘Just in Time’ delivery systems are becoming apparent in the form of empty shelves in the rice sections of local supermarkets, as the knock-on effect of global shortages is amplified by the lack of resilience in our food distribution system.

I suspect a combination of factors are in play that may make our food system far less stable and reliable than we believe:

• Just in Time delivery means that there is no redundant supply on hand to buffer runs on a particular food item. Shelves empty, and don’t refill until the next truck arrives.
• Globalized food speculation, production and distribution systems mean that food staples are not regionally insulated from each other. Shortages in the Asia rice markets cascade through to the Texas/California growing regions far more rapidly than in the past.
• Information and communication technologies, including both web and legacy media (WSJ, CNBC) propagate knowledge rapidly and effectively, giving more people in more places the ability to act rapidly on accurate and important information.

The combination of these factors forms what Thomas Homer-Dixon calls a tightly coupled network or system, prone to brittleness and rapid cascading failure.

The current shortage cycle is initially driven by heavy users of rice, such as extended families, small restaurants, and small retailers attempting to insulate themselves against rapid price rises by stocking up in advance, based on the information they have about future price and availability. However this creates a positive feedback loop, with medium and small users of rice picking up an extra bag to ensure they have enough for their family needs. Not a big deal in a storage-based system – but a serious problem in a JIT system, where every surge of purchases empties the shelves, and sets the stage for the next round of shortage.

Shortage in one staple creates concern about others, and with all grains in short supply worldwide, the ‘rice run’ could easily jump the shelves to create repeated runs on flour, pasta and other staples.

The result is a crystal-clear example of the pursuit of capitalist efficiency through ’JIT’ leading to a brittle and failure-prone system where any contraction at all in of the system inputs leads directly to cascading failure.

The solution is also clear: we need a less efficient (more redundant, lower-velocity, less tightly integrated) food system. And the same applies to any life of our support systems: When it comes to the things that really matter for survival, efficiency is the enemy of effectiveness.