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The rise of the producer consumer

In today's production economy, sentiment is shifting back towards sustainability and homemade products, where the power is in the individual's hands.
3 min read
Published 12 Nov, 2018

You’ve spent your whole life buying mass-produced products - we all have. But sentiment is shifting towards sustainability and homemade products.

This is truer than ever for the energy marketplace.

It’s hard for us to imagine life before machines and factories: when every piece of clothing was made by hand and food was grown in our backyards or bought at the local market. But once upon a time, this was the norm. We knew what was in our food and who made our clothing.

However, the need to have things quickly and conveniently took over. Franchises and supermarket giants took over, and it’s easy to see why. You could buy all your groceries in one place: meat, bread, fruit and vegetables, toiletries and common household items. It was a more efficient way to shop.

The free (farmer’s) market economy

History has shown that as society becomes accustomed to a new way of being, something new enters the market, but often we revert to a new version of old concepts. The perfect illustration of this is the rise of the farmer’s market.

Farmer’s markets – typically small markets held in public places like schools and local halls – enable producers to sell directly to the public. This helps consumers cut their food miles by buying locally and having face-to-face contact with producers, much like it was pre-mass production. And they’re not a small business, either.

Australian farmers’ markets have grown progressively in recent years, and there are now more than 160 farmers’ markets nationally.

Bringing it even closer to home, the rise of home production – backyard veggie patches, beehives and small-batch preserves – has seen the rise of community food swap programs. This takes cash out of the equation completely and relies on bartering and exchange. Have too much cauliflower? Swap it for some blackberry jam. Food swap networks are on the rise internationally.

As we turn away from mass-produced consumables, like food, we’re also increasingly turning away from energy handed down from power lines.

The power to produce

Electricity production has always been the realm of corporations, the big power companies with the technology and expertise to create energy safely and effectively.

But reduced solar system costs mean the capacity to create energy is becoming more achievable.

If you have solar panels on your roof, you are a producer. Your house functions precisely like a solar plant, only on a smaller scale. As your panels create energy, that energy is consumed by your home or put back into the grid.

If you have solar batteries in your home, that energy is stored and transmitted back into your house as needed, meaning less reliance on the grid and more self-sufficiency.

The producer/consumer is a natural progression of our production economy, putting the power of production back into the hands of the individual.

Producing your own power gives you better control over how energy is produced and consumed by your home.

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