How Fred W Smith's logistics revolution changed global food

The Third Punic War, in which Rome destroyed Carthage, was famously fuelled by the delivery of figs. The orator Cato, addressing the Senate, produced fresh figs from Carthage, which he claimed reached Rome in just three days. This convinced senators about the threat from their North African rivals.

In his essay ‘Cato’s African Figs’, FJ Meijer analyses the logistics of Roman shipping and fig ripening to argue that the fruits could not have come from Carthage (now Tunisia) so soon. He suggests they came from fig trees from Carthage planted on Cato’s Italian estate, which is three days’ journey from Rome. Cato twisted words to get the war he wanted, knowing “the approval fine country fruits would arouse among the senatorial gentlemen farmers”.

Meijer had data because Rome stood at the centre of an amazing system to transport perishable foods. Trade networks had transported long-lasting foods, like spices and dried fruits, for centuries. Elites across the world were able to get special deliveries of perishable foods. In the early days of Tata Airlines, later Air India, its early supporters included maharajas who used the planes to send mangoes and paan leaves to their London homes. A remarkable example is the Inca system of casqui relay runners who could bring the king fresh fish from Peru’s coast to the capital of Cuzco, 500 km away and 3,300 metres higher.

Rome’s networks brought foods to regular citizens, in the process changing the geography of the city. Monte Testaccio is an artificial hill in Rome made up of the broken amphorae, the earthen jars that brought vast amounts of olive oil from Spain to Rome. Transport also changed the nature of foods, particularly through the barrels used for carrying wine and spirits. The flavours of the barrel wood permeated the alcohol, adding tastenotes that people came to like so much that now barrelageing is part of the manufacturing process.

Fred W Smith, the founder of FedEx, who passed away recently, didn’t set out to deliver food, but he wouldn’t have been surprised that fresh food deliveries became a potent symbol of the transport revolution he created. Smith’s father operated both longdistance buses and one of the earliest quick-service restaurant chains. Chain logistics was in his blood and helped him conceptualise the hub-and-spoke system of logistics where, instead of point-to-point delivery, huge efficiencies are achieved by bringing cargo to a central point and then out again.

Smith was an enthusiastic pilot and made dedicated cargo planes vital to the logistics system he set up, centred at Memphis, Tennessee. In Moveable Feasts , Sarah Murray’s book on food logistics, she surveys the system through one of its most striking annual events: “In the runup to Thanksgiving, turkeys by the thousands fly around the country, powered by jetengines, not wings and feathers.”

Despite endless reminders to buy in advance, people still order last minute, depending on FedEx and other courier companies to ensure they get their birds in time, in a madly compressed period when much of the cargo through Memphis is meat.

Air freight also created a global food craze. A basic logistics problem is ensuring cargo both ways, preventing expensive empty return trips. In the 1970s, as Japan’s exports boomed, flights going back from Europe and the USA were running empty. Then someone noticed that bluefin tuna, much prized in Japan for eating raw in sushi and sashimi, was sold as cheap petfood in the West. Systems for flash freezing them from fishing boats were devised and the huge fish were flown to Japan.

Sushi made from the rich, fatty fish became affordable, and a taste for it spread from Japan to other parts of the world. Bluefin tuna is now caught globally and flown to Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, from where it goes back out to sushi lovers globally. It is a fish-focused version of Smith’s hub-and-spoke system, a testament to the transformative power of transporting perishable foods.