Unloading bananas in the Port of New Orleans (Louisiana), 1920s/1930s Postcard published by New Orleans News Co., New Orleans. Scanned by Infrogmation. Published in USA in early 20th century with no statement of copyright or date.
Map of the geographical distribution of the most important plants yielding food, 1854.
Source: Henfrey A., Johnston A., pubblished by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh. | davidrumsey.com
McCormick’s map of the world. From Singapore to Baltimore, 1933. Source: McCormick & Co., Baltimore (MD). | davidrumsey.com
AGRICULTURE AND LOGISTICS.
Goods and Landscapes / Crops and Territories.
Agriculture and logistics1 have been related since ancient times. In his portrait of the Mediterranean framework, Fernad Braudel describes how the dawn of history coincides with the invention of agriculture; the Neolithic revolution, dating back to 9000 B.C. This major transformation was first developed in the Middle East with basic crops, especially cereals and fruit trees, and from animal husbandry; these are the factors that led to the creation of the first permanent centres, because “when one says agriculture, one says sedentary and rooting in collective settlements” (Braudel, 1985, p.56). Those primitive cities represent the first appearance of rising civilizations based on several nodes that could not exist without an extensive network of connections and exchanges of food and craft products. Rising agricultural settlements facilitated maritime trade revolution, through which goods and techniques crossed rivers and seas, shore to shore, triggering the urban revolution of coastal territories and port cities. This was the Mediterranean world’s debut. Productive agricultural landscapes, and logistics landscapes2 - those areas connected to trades and transactions - have affected each other since the beginning. Goods lead processes and adapt the geographies of working spaces due to their inner rules, typologies, conservation needs and practices.
So, it’s interesting to explore the relationship between products and lands according to the idea that it is mostly commerce that defines the spatiality of the dynamic and relational contemporary environments.
Agriculture and Logistics.
From Port Emporium to Port Gateway
2.3.
Beatrice
Moretti
1. The concept of ‘logistics’ has
different definitions according to the breadth of vision through which is considered and to the specific context is referred. Generally, logistics has a territorial connotation and is described as the process of planning, implementing, and controlling procedures for the efficient and effective storage of goods, services, and related information. Glossary of Supply Chain Terms http://www.inboundlogistics.com/ cms/logistics-glossary/#L
2 Waldheim C., Berger A. (2008)
Logistic Landscape. In Landscape Journal (vol. 27 n. 2). Harvard Graduate School.
«Ma è certo che è la Merce che ha creato i porti, in virtù delle sue regole, delle sue abitudini, delle sue necessità.»
(Maggiani M., in ‘Piano, porto, città. L’esperienza di Genova’, SKIRA, p. 38)
Speicherstadt or ‘Warehouse City’, Port of Hamburg (Germany), 1885 ca.
Agriculture and logistics are connected through ancient links that have undergone profound changes over the years in the management of commercial products - mostly agricultural - and in turn generated large effects on port spaces and artifacts. In this sense, the most significant progress is the gradual but revolutionary transition from the port emporium to the port gateway. THE PORT EMPORIUM
Ports have existed since ancient times but, in the last century, they have changed significantly from the port as an emporium, through the industrial phase, to the actual model that has strong synergies with earth’s networks.
In the early Mediterranean world, an emporium3 referred to a landing place for loading, storing and selling products. First store-ports were, for example, the Roman Emporium river port, built on the Tevere riverside and, later, the big ports of Ostia and Civitavecchia built both as military outposts and food stores for Rome. Still, the most famous emporium of the past is the Piraeus in Athens: naval harbour, market and public space at the same time.
For centuries, port cities were commercial areas in which port devices characterized both the landscape and the working process giving form to a model of port able to be a place for storage, a market for the city and for foreign merchants. The port emporium was also a place for handling and forwarding products to their final destinations.
At that time, port cities did not require special connections with the hinterland as almost all of the port operations were man-aged in its spaces and, especially, in its buildings. These were structures associated with the port-as-an emporium model, namely buildings for loading grains, vegetables, fruits, spices, coffee, cotton, tobacco, etc. The port buildings were also centers for commerce where sales and exchanges took place.
Grain and wine silos, barns, general warehouses, hangars and food markets have worked for decades as an economic and social fulcrum between the docks and the negotiation spaces of the urban-port threshold.
Some significant examples of European ports emporia include Marseilles, where it is still possible to recognize the former commercial spaces located just behind the docks in the Vieux Port; Anyhow, a particular case is the Speicherstadt in the port of Hamburg, known as the largest warehouse district in the world. 3 The term ‘emporium’ derives
from the ancient Greek verb
pèiro (to cross), from which is
derived the noun pòros (passage, especially by sea), from which it originated èmporos (passenger, traveler, especially for commercial purposes), which in turn produced the Latin empòrion, which indicates precisely the place of landing of a maritime traveler.
PSA Terminal in Singapore Source: container-mag. com/2016/03/21/psa-pro- fit-hit-by-decline-in-singapo-re-volume/
The ’City of Warehouses’ (1883 - 1927) was built on timber-pile foundations as a free zone to transfer goods without paying customs. Today the Speicherstadt is both a tourist attraction than a trade district. Indeed, there are several museums but some of the buildings are still used as warehouses for different typologies of goods including cocoa, coffee, tea, spices, maritime equipment, and electronics.
Port spatiality acquired a new configuration around the middle of 1900s, when ship containers were introduced. Optimization, standardization, and inter-modality have become important adaptations for modern ports and this logistics progress has facilitated a gradual but radical change in the layout and identity of port territories.
THE PORT GATEWAY
The technological progress of ports during the twentieth century is well expressed by the sequence outlined by Anders Bjorklund4, - hook, crane, forklift and container - which describes the changes in merchandise management through the work instruments revolution. The introduction of containers, in the mid ‘50’s, revolutionized maritime trades around the world. Ports had to update their frameworks in terms of facilities, services and spaces: they lost their function of emporium and became links in the international supply chain. Ports have become a gateway5, an access to maritime traffic with solid connections through the overall logistics system. These are the ports of millions of containers, of hubs where goods are transiting invisibly without stopping, where products are not processed by local businesses, and the economic dynamics of the city are likely to move to other markets. However, all these changes - combined with the globalization and the phenomenon of port regionalization6 - have offered new opportunities to the agriculture and logistics bond. Indeed, the new relational dimension of cities and territories encourages the growth of integrated management models that subvert the old relationship between ports and inland territories for the production of food goods, allowing fresh models of advanced development to emerge.
In this context, the concept of foodshed may be employed. This term arose at the beginning the twentieth century in the United States to describe the complex flow that takes food from producer to consumer7. In the 90s, this notion acquired a spatial dimension that defined the socio-geographical region that 5 The ‘port gateway’ represents
the access to the mainland of the oceanic maritime traffic and has a solid connection with the overall logistics system. Glossario della Logistica, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano.
www.ilglossariodellalogistica.it
6 The port regionalization phase
is characterized by the joint and coordinated development of a specific load centre and multi-modal logistics platforms in the hinterland, ultimately leading to the formation of a regional load center network.
Notteboom T., Rodrigue J-P. (2012), Port regionalization: im-proving port competitiveness by reaching beyond the port perimeter. In: PORT TECHNOLOGY INTERNA-TIONAL, n. 52, pp. 11-17.
7 A ‘foodshed’ is the geographic
region that produces the food for a particular population. The term is used to describe a region of food flows, from the area where it is produced, to the place where it is consumed. The importance of this concept is emphasizing the geographical context of our food, namely where it comes from and where it ends up, and to increase the awareness of local population. Michigan State University http:// msue.anr.msu.edu/news/what_ is_a_food_shed
4 A. Björklund (1997), Hamnarbetet och
tekniken under 100 ar, in Alla dagar alla natter. Fyra transporthistoriska essäer, quoted in Green A. (2000), The work process, in S. Davies (eds.), Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, Aldershot, p. 575.
The Silo, Project by Cobe, Denmark, under costruction Source: cobe.dk
The Silo d’Arenc, Abandoned - Publication in Archicréé, 2006 | Source: studio-magellan.com The Silo d’Arenc - Publication in Archicréé, 2012 | Source: studio-magellan.com
produces the food including the land it is grown on, the route it travels, the markets it passes through, and the tables it ends up on. Today, 65 percent of the food in Italy is transported by sea: maritime trade ensures the exchange of agro-food products in order to feed the world. In Italy the position of agribusiness in the transportation field is growing with a record export of 22.5 million tons in 20158. An example of this cohesive agriculture and logistics contemporary pairing could be, for sure, the systems of logistics platforms for fruits and vegetables, such as in the Ferrandina area, working in association with the port of Taranto. Another example is the Greenmed companies, instituted for the exchange of fresh fruit and vegetables from the surrounding agricultural regions of Puglia and Calabria. Many others businesses are involved in the food industry within the Ravenna’s district, which is today the undoubted hub of the Italian Agrifood sector.
PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE AND ACTIVE HERITAGE New programs for former silos, hangars and warehouses / some examples
The transition from port emporium to port gateway opens a new phase in maritime trades but leaves deep marks in the existing port palimpsest. From an architectural and urban perspective, the most evident leftovers are the artefacts located on the urban-port interface; devices of a kind of port that no longer exists. In some European port cities, the recycling process began in the 80s, but for an advanced restructuring of spaces and machines many decades are required. However, today it is possible to mention some international projects in which the port character assumes new meanings and improves different functional programs.
In Marseilles, the Euroméditerranée project is responsible for the strategic planning of vast areas of the port city from 1995. Be-sides the important intervention on the Juliette Docks, it is worth mentioning two projects: the reconversion into a theatre of the Silo d’Arenc, a former grain warehouse (2011) and the transfor-mation into a mixed use building of the Hangar J1 located in the commercial port area (2013).
In Northern Europe the practice of converting the disused port heritage was initiated much earlier.
In Copenhagen, the MVRDV project for Frøsilo (2005) uses the structural limitations of the silos as a design challenge in the realization of a residential complex.
8 The flows of agro-food products
from Italy and from abroad are estimated each year at about 22.5 million tons, equal to 34.3 billion euros, while the import and export transportations through Italian ports amounted to 26.2 million tons (7% of the total of goods moved by sea). Source: V Rapporto sull’economia del mare. Cluster marittimo e sviluppo in Italia. FDM - Censis, 2015.
Still, the project of Cobe for the Nordhavnen silo storage, The Silo (ongoing), proposes to enhance the magnificent spatial variation floor by floor for the realization of a contemporary urban silo. In Rotterdam, the urban-port planning strategies reflect a synergic and multi-scalar approach.
The CityPorts project (2007- ongoing) pursues the conversion of four operational districts in several hybrid port-city areas. Among these, the RDM Campus in Stadshavens, is a new pole of industrial manufacturing and applied sciences schools born in place of old shipyards and the M4H in Merwe-Vierhavens, formerly one of the biggest fruit ports in the world, today is an innovative cluster with a focus on technological and manufacturing industries from the agro-food and farm sectors. Stadshavens area, CityPorts Project, Port of Rotterdam (NL) Source: rdmrotterdam.nl
Autorità Portuale Di Genova (2004),
“Il commercio internazionale.” In: Piano
regolatore Portuale, Scenari evolutivi, pp.
43 - 44
Braudel F. (1985), Il Mediterraneo. Lo
spazio, gli uomini, le tradizioni. XXIII
Edizione Tascabili Bompiani
Caligari M. (2011), La rivoluzione dei
containers nel porto di Genova (1969-’83): appunti su ‘lavoro artigianale’, spazio e tempo. Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia
Feagan R. (2007), “The place of food:
mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems.” In: Progress in Human
Geogra-phy n. 31, pp. 23 – 42;
Hedden W.P. (1929), How great cities
are fed, Boston: D.C. Heath and
Com-pany;
Maggiani M. (2002), Il porto di Genova,
Racconti, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore
Minella M. (2003), “C’era una volta il
porto emporio, moli e scagni vo-tati alla Merce.” In: La Repubblica.it, 22/07/2003;
Molinari L. edited by (2002), Piano porto
città. L’esperienza di Genova. Milano
Skira, pp. 36-46;
Musso E., Ghiara H. (2007), Ancorare
i porti al territorio: dai traffici alla marit-timizzazione, McGraw-Hill, Milano
Notteboom T., Rodrigue J-P. (2012),
“Port regionalization: improving port competitiveness by reaching beyond the port perimeter.“ In: PORT
TECHNOL-OGY INTERNATIONAL, n. 52, pp. 11-17
Notteboom T., Rodrigue J-P. (2006),
Port regionalization: towards a new phase in port development. In: Maritime
Policy and Management, Vol. 32, No. 3,
pp. 297-313
Peters C., Bills, N., Fick G. (2008),
“Foodshed analysis and its relevance to sustainability.” In: Renewable Agriculture
and Food Systems n. 24, pp. 1-7
References
Vallega A. (1997), Geografia delle
strat-egie marittime. Dal mondo dei mercanti alla società transindustriale, Mursia
Editore
V Rapporto sull’economia del mare. Cluster marittimo e sviluppo in Italia. FDM - Censis, 2015.
http://federazionedelmare.it/pubblica- zioni-della-federazione/pubblicazioni- della-federazione/48-iv-rapporto-sull-economia-del-mare-2
GENOA PORT CENTER, L’evoluzione nei porti - http://www.genoaportcenter.it/ Pagina.aspx?idPag=114
EMPORIO, etymology and definitions - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emporio PORTO DELL’EMPORIO A ROMA - http://www.annazelli.com/porto-dell’-emporio-scomparso-roma.htm FOODSHED, definitions - https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodshed - http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/what_ is_a_food_shed
InforMARE - Il trasporto via mare di merci alimentari è pari a 5,800 miliardi di tonnellate-km all’anno
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Trasporto di Prodotti Alimentari: garan-tire la qualità - http://www.irvea.org/ voce-agli-esperti/trasporto-di-prodot-ti-alimentari-garantire-la-qualita/ TRASPORTO EUROPA “Cresce il peso dell’alimentare nei trasporti” giugno 2015
http://www.trasportoeuropa. it/index.php/logistica/archivio- logistica/13063-cresce-il-peso-dellal-imentare-nei-trasporti
SASSILIVE.IT “Braia: piattaforma logistica agroalimentare a Ferrandina per sviluppo agricoltura e economia lucana” dicembre 2015 - http:// www.sassilive.it/economia/lavoro/ braia-piattaforma-logistica-agroali- mentare-a-ferrandina-per-sviluppo-agricoltura-e-economia-lucana/ COMUNE DI PISTICCI “Porto di Taran-to: nasce Greenmed, per la movimen-tazione dei produttori ortofrutticoli di Puglia, Basilicata e Calabria” - agosto 2014 - http://www.comune.pisticci. mt.it/cms/en/newsletter-assessor- ato-agricoltura/89-agricoltura/976- porto-di-taranto-nasce-greenmed- per-la-movimentazione-dei-produt- tori-ortofrutticoli-di-puglia-basilica-ta-e-calabria.html
ROTTERDAM INNOVATION DISTRIC (RID), STADSHAVENS ROTTERDAM – Creating on the edge 2007-2015 STADSHAVENS ROTTERDAM – Creating on the edge - http://stad-shavensrotterdam.nl - https://www. rdmrotterdam.nl
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ROTTERDAM, (RDM_00) Stadshavens area (CityPorts Project) www.rdmrotterdam.nl/en/events-2/stadshavens-tour/
