The CEO of one of the world’s largest logistics companies told Swiss broadcaster SRF on March 5 that Dubai has approximately ten days of fresh food left. That sentence has not appeared on a single major English-language front page. It should be the headline.
Stefan Paul, CEO of Kuehne and Nagel, was not speaking hyperbolically. He was reading his company’s supply chain data.
Dubai and the broader Gulf import between 80 and 90 percent of their food. Approximately 70 percent of GCC foodstuffs transit the Strait of Hormuz. The strait has been closed to commercial traffic since February 28.
Global air cargo capacity serving the Middle East fell 22 percent between February 28 and March 3, according to Aevean data published through Reuters.
Jebel Ali, the port that serves 50 million people across the Gulf and serves as the regional hub through which the vast majority of Dubai’s perishable imports flow, was struck and suspended operations, with partial resumption beginning March 5.
Ten days of fresh produce is what you have when the ship lanes close, the air routes collapse, and the port is hit simultaneously.
Fresh produce is not canned goods. It is not strategic reserves. It is the strawberries, the tomatoes, the lettuce, the mangoes, the herbs, and the dairy that make a modern city function as a modern city. These products have days of shelf life, not weeks or months. They cannot be rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope because the Cape of Good Hope adds four to six weeks to a transit and a strawberry does not survive four to six weeks in a container.
When the routes close, the perishable category depletes in real time with no backstop.
Dubai is one of the wealthiest cities on earth. It has the fiscal capacity, the sovereign wealth, and the logistical relationships to acquire food from anywhere. The problem is not money. The problem is physics. You cannot teleport produce from Spain or Kenya or India onto Dubai supermarket shelves when the air cargo lanes are 22 percent contracted and the port is still recovering from Iranian strikes. The money is willing. The infrastructure is not available.