Food for thought: Transport within the food supply chain

Abstract

Recently Hayden and Zunino Singh wrote in the Journal of Transport History of the greater need to study food movement. Whilst accepting their general premise, we argue that they downplay the fact that the evolution of logistics and supply chains has received sparse attention in the historical literature. Using case studies of the domestic British milk trade (1919–c.1945) and international quail trade (c.1850–1914), we demonstrate how a concept originating in the study of modern supply chains – supply chain governance – can be illuminating. As a conceptual framework, this can facilitate the identification of key agents, institutions and goods movements within supply chains, and the nature of the relationships between them, whilst illuminating how change and development is shaped by regulation, economic cycles, consumer demand, and, of course, transport. The concept's application therefore presents a robust way to better understand the movement of goods in history.