The economy has forgotten its matter
Physical flows have never been larger, nor more invisible. This text explains why counting them seriously — uncertainties included — is the precondition of any supply-chain or territorial strategy. It is the reason TerriFlux exists.
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The economy has left the territory
Globalised supply chains have severed the link between a place and what it makes. Territories produce for other territories and consume goods from elsewhere, with no strong connection between the two — the exact opposite of a territorial economy, where what is produced somewhere would also be processed and consumed there.
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And it has dematerialised — in our heads only
That shift comes with an apparent dematerialisation of the economy. Not in reality: material flows have never been larger. In our minds. Neither citizens, nor territories, nor even industry itself have much idea of the material flows moving along their supply chains.
The “magic of the market” that let us forget our material footing has a counterpart: the global ecological crisis.
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Matter, however, has not gone anywhere
That crisis — and the occasional broken supply chain — reminds us that the economy has a physical side, and that flows of materials and energy sit at its core. Environmental impacts follow directly from those physical flows. Reducing impacts means understanding and reducing the flows themselves.
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Relocalising means learning to count
Bringing part of the economy back to the territory is now a widely shared goal. But it rests on a prerequisite that is rarely met: understanding the material flows that run through the local economy. No statutory physical accounting brings them together.
The data exists, but it is produced in sectoral silos with no concern for consistency upstream or downstream, or ad hoc by trade bodies and technical institutes. What is left is a heterogeneous pile combining uncertainty, gaps and contradictions. Rebuilding those flows is a challenge — and it is precisely our trade.
Organising flows into supply chains
Physical flows come from two processes: transport — trade and logistics, by truck or by rail — and industrial transformation: milk becomes yoghurt or butter, a log becomes a plank. Those flows are tied to one another. There is a link between the baguettes consumed and the wheat grown, between furniture produced and forest growth. Grouping them into supply chains reveals matter “flowing” along a chain: from tree to furniture, from grain to food.
A supply chain
All the interdependent sectors along a transformation chain, from raw material to consumption. That interdependence shows up first as flows of matter between sectors.
A supply balance
What comes in, what goes out, what is lost. Knowing where a resource truly comes from — and what you depend on — is the first operational use of a flow map.
Environmental pressures
Carbon and nitrogen emissions, farmland mobilised, water consumed: pressures are computed from physical flows, not the other way round.
A value chain
Monetary flows derive from material flows, and with them value added and employment. Seen from that angle, the supply chain becomes a value chain — one model, two readings.
Five ways to read a flow
Counting matter, yes — but the same flow can be read in five ways, each answering a different question. This grid comes from chapter 1.2 of the edited volume Métabolisme des systèmes agri-alimentaires : flux, filières, territoires (Éditions Quae), to which we contributed. Nothing about it is specific to agriculture: it holds for a flow of timber, waste, water or energy.
The flow as materiality
How big, of what quality, how it is distributed, what footprint it leaves. The focus is the flow itself. This is the dimension that answers questions of autonomy and dependency, and the one that surfaces the traces usually kept out of sight.
The flow as a relation
What the flow connects, rather than the flow itself: two organisations, a whole network, or a flow and the infrastructure meant to absorb it. This is the dimension that tells you whether a processing plant will find its supply, or whether one link holds a dominant position.
The flow as circulation
Where, through which circuits, over what actual distances. Location, territorial anchoring, routes: the logistics dimension — the one that weighs most in a relocation strategy, and in computing transport impacts.
The flow as an object of regulation
The arrangements that frame flows and hold them steady, crises included, and the decision system behind them: who decides, how disputes are handled, at which level each lever actually sits.
The flow as a political object
Making excess, inequality, vulnerabilities and their transfers visible — and looking critically at the way flows are named, measured and regulated in the first place.
A single map almost never serves all five at once. Naming the one you are after before starting — rather than afterwards — is what separates a useful study from a diagnosis that answers nobody's question. Our research work concentrates on the first two, the only ones that can be computed.
What the method changes
Counting matter is not about producing a pretty picture. Here is what the method actually brings to a supply chain or a public body.
- A method validated scientifically, published in peer-reviewed journals.
- Field-tested with stakeholders across dozens of supply chains and territories.
- Data centralised in a format built for debate: co-construction is what keeps the resulting strategies above criticism.
- Explicit uncertainties, so you know which conclusions hold — and which surveys deserve improvement.
- Updates and monitoring over time made far easier.
- A standardised method: results compare from one territory to the next.
- Guaranteed multi-scale consistency: regional results add up to the national one.
- Shared progress: knowledge added in one region improves the results everywhere else.
The machinery behind it — constrained reconciliation, downscaling, uncertainty propagation — is detailed on our Research page, and told from the beginning in our story.
Emblematic supply chains, not exclusive ones
This reasoning was born on bioeconomy supply chains — the economy of living resources: food, forestry and wood, biomass energy, renewable chemistry. They remain the most emblematic, because territories are rich in them and regional biomass strategies already exist. But the method owes them nothing in particular: it applies just as well to a city’s waste, to a country’s energy metabolism, or to construction materials. Anywhere matter circulates and the numbers do not add up.
The argument, spoken out loud
June 2019, Inria scientific days: Jean-Yves Courtonne lays out biomass supply chain flow analysis in twenty minutes — competing uses, statistics produced in silos, data reconciliation, downscaling from national to regional, and results on cereals and wood. This is the same text, with the diagrams. In French.
Asked that day whether the diagrams could be interactive rather than static, he answered that they were not there yet and that much remained to be built. That became OpenSankey.
See what it looks like
Published flow maps, data and uncertainties included — or the editor itself, free and without an account, to try it on your own figures.