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. 

Fred W Smith’s logistics revolution changed the global food game. In his essay ‘Cato’s African Figs’, F.J. 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 that it helps to improve the logistics and supply chain trends. 

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, to countries. 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. 

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 long-distance 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.