Recently Gabriella wrote this lovely piece on her blog, whose complete title is “surviving the suburban life.” I pass along her eloquence about growing or buying local here.
Notice the five white reefer containers near the top; they have compressor machinery at one end. They might contain imported blueberries, tomatoes, flowers; maybe imported apples for the big apple.
Stuff imported and more. I’m not preaching, and…
I’ll buy and use some of the stuff, but
what is the future? While driving in rural Alberta last week, I saw a dozen or so containers at the end of a hay field. As an old farm hand I checked what agricultural stuff would travel in the containers: outbound alfalfa hay.
The mosaic of primer color containers has become like a bar code imprinted everywhere in our environment, the contemporary ever-shifting logo on the waterways, rails, and highway; around factories and behind shopping emporiums; even in the hayfields near the continental divide.
I suppose this has roots in the 19th century when Hudson River ice packed in sawdust went to the tropics and coastal guano and of course many other raw tropical commodities–some of the same as the ones today–travel up to our latitudes.
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August 18, 2007 at 3:37 pm
suburbanlife
Will- thanks for your kind comment on and plug of my post – I appreciate this very much.
The first picture above, where you mention reefer containers have a compressor at the end of each ? I tried to make out this in the photo, but was not sure what to look for- anyhow there is so much more to consider in order to have a rudimentary understanding and awareness of the enormity of engineering knowledge and scale of resource use in the shipping of temperature-dependent consumables. The scale and complexity of this undertaking, that is so easy to take for granted, boggles my mind.
G
As to the containers you saw at the end of the field in Alberta, and the shipment of alfalfa hay, where on earth would there be need to ship hay in containers. This shatters my pre-conception that hay to feed lifestock is generally transported within a fairly limited region.
BTW are containers universally colour-coded for what is inside them -electronics, agricultural products, softgoods, etc? Just nosy