Efficiency and forward planning — Time has taught us to plan ahead so there will be less surprises and stress in our lives. Less stress means being a lot happier with life, both at work and at home.
Someone who has to travel miles to work knows that the car has to be reliable, have good tires, be ready to start in the cold weather with enough gas to allow getting to work and to get gas. If it normally takes an hour to get to work, then usually an extra fifteen minutes is allowed, just in case.
For a dairy farmer who just walks across the yard to get to work in the barn, as long as your work boots are dry and work clothes are clean, then getting to work is not much stress. If the farm is a bit larger, some forward . . .
planning must be done to schedule enough employees to be at work at different times to be sure all the farm jobs get done on time.
Hungry animals don’t expect any delays in getting fed or milked on time. When grandma and grandpa milked the little dairy herd by hand, they didn’t have to worry about the hydro not working at milking time. Hydro electric power hadn’t been invented yet. When they bottled their own milk on the farm and delivered it in town with a horse and milk wagon, they didn’t worry too much about trucking because everything was under their own control.
As years went by, everyone became more dependent upon transportation of everything, from someone else trucking the milk to town to be processed, by someone else to the feed mill delivering prepared feed to the farm to feed the animals when needed.
Moving stuff became a well-oiled machine that delivered everything just on time. Not only does the milk have to be picked up at farms regularly but the clothes that you buy in the store have to be ordered months before the store needs them, so the clothing manufacturer can plan ahead, ordering the right cloth, scheduling the work load in the factory so it is busy all year long and provide year round employment to the employees.
Some of the most efficient automobile factories only stock enough parts to build cars for a day or two. They rely on trucks or trains to deliver parts only a day or two before they are needed.
Much of Canada’s grain exports are in transit on trucks, trains, or ships only a few days before the grain is to be loaded onto ships that go across the sea. We watched a large truckers protest block traffic between the USA and Canada and some trucks clogged traffic in Ottawa for a few weeks, but one modern freight train can move as much freight as 100 or more tractor trailers.
Recently we have noticed many transportation disruptions by strikes, protests and even a war going on in another continent. Any disruption in transportation triggers changes in delivery times, temporary manufacturing shutdowns and even questions about where new factories should be built.
Ultimately it’s the consumer who has to pay for any extra expense like overtime for truckers to catch up, temporary shutdowns caused by shortages of materials necessary to make products, some fresh foods being thrown out because transport delays were too long and food began to spoil.
With some huge price increases predicted in prices of seed, fertilizer, fuel and machine parts some farmers are talking about changing some crops or not even planting some fields this year. This can only lead to more food price increases than was predicted because of the uncertainty of whether all grain crops will be planted in Ukraine which is known as “the breadbasket of Europe.”
Remember that crops planted by farmers this spring will not produce grain which will hit the market until next year. Reduced grain on the market will cause grain prices to rise. Some of that more expensive grain will be fed to chickens, pigs, beef and dairy cattle. Expect those food prices to go up again in 2023-24 when those animals have eaten that more expensive grain.
Since gas prices have begun to skyrocket, there has been much discussion at the coffee shops about why Canada produces more crude oil than the Canadian consumers can use. If you watch the news, you have noticed that Texas crude is always priced a lot higher than Canadian crude. Texas crude and many foreign oils are less expensive to refine than much of our Canadian crude oil. Some refineries don’t even refine Canadian crude oil. Some of the imported crude that Canada used to depend on, is now being sold for a higher price to European countries that used to use Russian oil.
Our world has become accustomed to a very efficient transport system that used inexpensive oil and moved all kinds of stuff. With various disruptions in transport from war to strikes and pressure on the world to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel, the entire system of where to grow, process, manufacture and how it is being rethought and will allow us to bring stuff closer to home and cost less to move.
