Most people are unaware of a fifteen mile section of the Mississippi River close to St. Louis. From the highway there doesn’t appear to be much. Barge terminals grain silos and the sporadic dust cloud rising from a conveyor belt. However this section of river transports more tons per mile than any inland canal in the United States directing soybeans and maize from Illinois and Iowa into the Gulf of Mexico and out to a world that depends on it. As you watch forty barge tows glide south from the levee it’s difficult to ignore how imperceptible this entire system is.
Although we almost ever consider them as such port cities have been constructing food empires for over two millennia. Harbors like Alexandria and Carthage ran what historians today refer to as the first global economy long before supply chain software or venture financing. They transported Chinese silk across Southeast Asia Egyptian wheat to Rome and Indian pepper to the Mediterranean. The ships were not like the others. The products are now different. However the reasoning hasn’t.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Ancient Food Hubs | Alexandria (Egypt), Muziris (India), Guangzhou (China), Carthage, Piraeus |
| Modern Critical Ports | Rotterdam, Singapore, Shanghai, Houston, Santos (Brazil), Antwerp |
| Key Food Commodities | Wheat, rice, maize, soybeans (60% of global food energy) |
| Critical Chokepoints | Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Strait of Malacca, Turkish Straits, Strait of Gibraltar |
| Largest Grain Network | St. Louis region (USA) – handles 50% of U.S. crops within 500-mile radius |
| Top Export Dependency | 54% of global grain now passes through maritime chokepoints |
| Reference Source | Chatham House – Chokepoints in Global Food Trade |
lexandria’s twin harbors and the Pharos lighthouse shining on the verge of Africa weren’t the only things that made it so powerful in 100 CE. Beneath it all was the political machinery: the grain warehouses that stretched back from the docks the customs taxes the officials who could keep bread prices stable throughout a fifty million person empire. At the height of the empire Egypt is estimated to have provided a third of Rome’s grain almost all of which passed through Alexandria’s stone quays. Rome’s political stability collapsed after losing that port. To control it was to control the gut of an empire.
A similar tale is told by the ancient port of Muziris which was buried for centuries on the Malabar Coast of India. Muziris became the gateway when Greco Roman sailors discovered they could ride monsoon winds directly across the Arabian Sea rather than skirting the shoreline for months. Pearls ivory jewels pepper outbound. Roman glassware wine and gold coins arrived. India was draining Rome’s economy of fifty million sesterces annually according to Pliny the Elder. This sounds like the kind of trade deficit dread that never truly goes away. According to a papyrus from the second century the cargo of a single ship was worth seven million sesterces. Just one ship.
Now the players have evolved but the chokepoints have remained the same. A few marine straits the Panama Canal the Suez and the Strait of Malacca pass through around 54% of grain that is traded worldwide. Sixty percent of the world’s dietary energy comes from only three crops: wheat rice and maize. Soybeans account for 65% of the world’s protein feed. Every year more than 25% of soybean exports from Brazil and the American Midwest pass through the Strait of Malacca alone in order to feed cattle in China and throughout East Asia.
It’s still unknown if the majority of individuals are aware of this system’s vulnerability. Nigerian food prices may rise as a result of a labor strike at a port on the Gulf Coast. A naval blockade such as the one Russia enforced on Ukraine alters wheat markets worldwide overnight and drives up the price of yams in Lagos. In 2021 the Ever Given container ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal delaying cargo of grain fertilizer and cooking oil in addition to sneakers and electronics. The entire system is predicated on the idea that ships will continue to move.
Despite its Midwestern anonymity the St. Louis area is at the heart of a food network that would have pleased the Ptolemies. Within five hundred miles half of the crops grown in the United States are grown. With more than a thousand PhDs in plant science employed at institutions like the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Bayer’s North American headquarters the area boasts the highest concentration of plant science PhDs on the planet. It’s difficult to imagine a more dull sounding location for the future of food production but there it is.
In an effort to be closer to the barges and the grain Bunge recently relocated its worldwide offices from New York to the St. Louis region. Cahokia Illinois a small community across the river that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map is home to the three largest grain loading facilities on the whole inland canal system. Thirty tons of cargo may be unloaded by operators in five minutes. It’s like watching two millennia of port logic crammed into a few cranes and conveyors.
Scale and pace have changed not the core concept. The St. Louis region uses rail lines barge terminals and futures contracts to control access to western Mediterranean markets just as ancient Carthage did through a network of treaty ports and dependent colonies. Long distance maritime trade was invented by Phoenician traders from Tyre who also created an alphabet in part to log transactions. Today’s agtech startups use soil sensors and genomic modeling to solve the same problem moving more food farther with less friction.
People are beginning to notice especially after the epidemic disrupted supply lines and the conflict in Ukraine closed ports in the Black Sea. By 2040 Singapore’s port modernization project which will cost $14 billion would provide the largest automated facility in the world. Drones driverless vehicles no longshoremen to strike. The conventional risks to port operations such as labor disputes and antiquated infrastructure could not be as significant in the future. Another possibility is that we’re simply creating more effective quicker versions of the same vulnerabilities.
This is how port towns have always operated converting chokepoints into empires monsoon winds into money and geography into leverage. They continue to do so. Until a ship becomes trapped we simply don’t discuss them much.
i) https://www.thefreightway.com/ag-coast-of-america-now-has-all-the-ingredients-in-place-to-feed-the-world/
ii) https://www.agweb.com/opinion/power-and-importance-modern-ports
iii) https://www.chathamhouse.org/2017/06/chokepoints-global-food-trade-five-things-you-should-know
iv) https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/8-ancient-port-cities-that-controlled-global-trade.html