Good Food & Wood store
The Ultimate Community Based 'Green' Business
Every local Community would benefit from a small 5-10 acre facility to produce fresh food year round and a variety of wood products from the surrounding farms. This facility would create dozens of new jobs, be net energy producing, and serve as an example for other communities. Joining with other similar ventures in the region would increase the marketing opportunities to larger population centers.
Local wood is the most amazing economic growth opportunity due to the low market value of trees in the industrial system, compared to the wood's high value in finished products. I just travelled 100 miles through SW Wisconsin today, seeing several hundred thousand acres of hardwood timber that is not valued, managed, or utilized in a responsible manner - THIS IS CRAZY. Selling locally grown and manufactured forest products to customers in S Wisconsin could almost immediately generate ten times the current level of economic activity in area timberlands that covers nearly half the landscape. Wood is simple to work with on a small scale and all the information and machinery needed is available today.
An acre of land is needed for log delivery, sorting, and storage. A small band sawmill with resaw and edger would mill logs into lumber. Solar Heated Lumber Kilns would dry the wood. A woodworking shop processes the lumber into high value products like flooring, cabinets, furniture, etc. Flooring and cabinets would be installed in the customer’s homes. A wood storage room and retail store connects the local growers to the customers. All the wood waste from the operation, plus wood waste from the area feeds a wood gasification co-generating system, producing all the electricity and heat needed for the entire facility. A manure/wet-waste digester generates methane gas to be burned for additional heat.
BioFuel is the best of all the "renewable green energy sources"! Trees and plants are the best solar collectors of all - they even store energy on cloudy days. We can stockpile dry wood chips (and baled agriculture waste) until we need them and wood is best burned. (We have been doing that for a very long time.) It is carbon neutral too. Wood gasification is the cleanest way to burn wood, though simple cumbustion may be better on a small scale. With Big Corporation environmental disasters more frequent, pressure on small scale energy plants to be "cleaner" should become more realistic.
Greenhouses grow fresh vegetables and fish (aquaponics) year round. There is a mutual benefit to plants and fish together in this system. Heat and supplemental light are provided by burning waste wood. All waste is recycled, nothing is lost. Solar Energy and the stored Solar Energy of biofuels provide fresh food year round even during our cold winters! A small biofuel cogeneration system has a significant start up cost, so 24 hour operation is important to make it more cost efficient. Having an on site use for the heat and electricity at night is an important factor. The power corporations don't pay a reasonable price for extra energy we would make, but if we use all we make - that is no problem.
A nice restaurant sells all locally grown food next door at maximum values. A Brewery or Winery would fit in here nicely too. The retail store also sells the whole range of fresh products for customers to take home. A commercial kitchen would be available to local residents/small businesses. Marketing systems would encourage and assist local seasonal gardeners/farmers to sell fresh crops. Seasonal crops could be frozen for use year round. Excess production is sold in markets in population centers.
Full time “Green” jobs are created in forest management, timber harvesting, woodworking, construction, energy production, farming, processing, food service, retailing…..
Local resources are kept as local as possible to benefit the local economy. Invest in your local economy!
For Global Good Use Local Food and Wood!
Diagram of the facility layout
Anyone got a better idea??
Birky