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Comment by peeters | Hacker News Reader

In Canada, there have been supply shortages but according to Robin Hood (major Canadian flour producer), the supply issues are both at the endpoint (grocery stores not stocking enough) as well as in secondary products, e.g. they cite that there's a lack of packaging, but that their flour supply is healthy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/robin-hood-flour-baking-yel...

That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

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This is another example of our economy being so interconnected that it's really hard to tell what is and isn't essential. If you lack enough "non-essential" goods for your business, then your business doesn't work either. I just hope that the businesses relying on machines for their output aren't reliant on some obscure parts that will be impossible to source if they break.

> That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

Mildly interesting number I worked out the other day: Canada produces about enough wheat for 2000 Calories/day for 80 million people. (With a population of ~38m.)

And what percentage of an average person's calorie intake would wheat normally be? 20%? 50% seems high? So you could multiply that 80 million figure by something like 5 to get a number of people that Canadian wheat farmers feed (400 million!).

Of course there's a lot of flaws with that type of math (I'm sure a significant percentage goes into animal feed, etc), but it's a fun way of thinking about the numbers. :) The vast size of the Canadian prairie wheat farms (and the relatively small number of people it takes to run them) are difficult to comprehend for a lot of people that don't live there.

This is an opportunity to reduce use of one-use packaging. Simply ship the flour in a gaylord to the point of distribution and have people bring their own canisters, tare them, and fill them.

When the virus persists for days on most surfaces and everyone is required to wear disposable gloves, customers bringing their own reusable bags has never been less appealing than it is right now.

NYC (coincidentally) banned single-use plastic bags a week or so before the COVID-19 outbreak, and it was quickly reversed on sanitation grounds.

I don't know if it's statewide but all my local stores in Massachusetts have banned bringing in reusable bags.

“Eco-friendly” reusable bags are also made from non-woven polypropylene, which is now in short supply as it’s essential for producing N95 filters, surgical masks, and hospital-grade fabrics like gowns and pillow cases.

I live in NYC and they still do not give us plastic bags anymore. Was this ban really "reversed"? I've been using reusable bags for the whole pandemic, and a quick google tells me the enforcement has been postponed, not that the ban was reversed.

You’re right that it was only delayed, but it has so far been delayed three times. Retailers filed lawsuits against the ban that the courts have no capacity to deal with, so it’s unlikely to be enforced (or formally reversed) until the outbreak subsides.

I live in Brooklyn and still get plastic bags at three different grocery stores I can think of. (I reuse them as trash can liners, so the ban always seemed silly to me — I’d need to start buying my own plastic bags in addition to the paper ones I recycle.) There was a week or two that most stores switched to paper, so you may be seeing paper-only bags from stores that have unused stock to go through. Some grocers (Whole Foods) have always been paper-only.

New Hampshire, Illinois, and Massachusetts have specifically banned the use of reusable shopping bags in grocery stores state-wide on sanitation grounds. San Francisco has as well. I was confusing these with NYC when I commented above. NYC’s enforcement delays are unrelated to concerns over reusables.

I like this model, and this is how I normally buy my flour, but since this pandemic started, my bulk goods store no longer allows you to bring in containers or scoop your own goods - a staff member escorts you around the store and scoops what you want into plastic bags. Works alright, though it’s a bit less convenient to estimate the amount of their bags that I need to fit my containers.

This is almost certainly not the time for that. Stores have eliminated a lot of their self-serve stations and even deli counters and the like.

The bulk bins are still open in my neighborhood.

> This is an opportunity to reduce use of one-use packaging. Simply ship the flour in a gaylord to the point of distribution and have people bring their own canisters, tare them, and fill them.

One of the first things to go at our local grocery stores were bulk-binned products that weren't fresh produce. They've also banned reusable shopping bags. I don't anyone is going to try an idea like yours soon.

In other words, supply-chain problems just like we're seeing in many other segments: paper products, sanitizer, rice/beans, etc.

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