A Mulberry-scale unlock for beef supply chain transparency
Prime Future 223: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy
"The Allies realized that a massive invasion of troops on the shores of northern Europe would give the best chance of defeating Hitler. The success of such an invasion and the retaking of occupied territories would require a level of logistical organization that only the possession of a port could guarantee. Trying to retake a port from the Germans would be too risky and unpredictable, so the Allies decide, following Churchill's suggestion, to build an artificial harbor."
The code name was Mulberry: the creation of two floating ports that, after the troops landed and moved past the beaches of Normandy, would be set up to allow the 3,128,000 tons of equipment, vehicles, and supplies to be unloaded in the subsequent months to support what was expected to be a lengthy battle for Normandy and then all of France.
Because a successful invasion would require the use of a port, Hitler had the ports even more well defended than simply the "Atlantic wall" he'd ordered constructed along the entire European Atlantic coastline of obstructions that would slow an attempted invasion by the Allies.
In a memo on the engineering requirements that would have to be met, Churchill wrote:
"Logistics are the lifeblood of our armies!
The harbors must float up and down with the tide. The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out. Don't argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves."
If D-Day changed the trajectory and outcome of WW2, which changed the trajectory of world history, and the ingenuity of Mulberry enabled D-Day….then it’s not an overstatement to say that this innovation changed the course of world history.
Here is a museum replica of what the engineers created for deployment on D-Day:
The innovation of the Mulberry ports is more than a fascinating history that well-informed, freedom-loving humans should know; this is (obviously) relevant to our discussion about beef supply chain transparency.