How to Feed 400,000 People In One Location

scaledwm.IMG_3792I recently came across a TechCrunch post discussing the logistics of feeding 400,000 workers at one of Foxconn’s factories in China (Foxconn is one of the main manufacturers of Apple products). The post is interesting throughout, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people work there, at a single factory (albeit many buildings). To put that number in perspective:

  • 1 in 3,250 people in China work at this factory site
  • 1 in 17,500 people in the world work there
  • The workforce at this factory exceeds Iceland’s population of 318,000

What a huge number. Anyways, here are a few worthwhile excerpts from the post:

Driving from the Foxconn Factory, down the road from the main gate, we spotted a truck full of pigs in an open-sided container. They were huge, porcine pink, and surprisingly clean. They were still alive – but wouldn’t be for long – and they were, we could only presume, destined for the bellies of some of the company’s 400,000 workers.

As the truck trundled along the well-paved road, I flicked through the pictures I took of the Foxconn kitchen. It was something out of a delicious version of Hieronymus Bosch: huge cauldrons manned by men and women in white smocks, smoke and steam coming out of huge soup pots, the food flipped and tossed using shovels.

Raw materials enter at one end, are unloaded, and sorted. Rice go on one path while 40 metric tons of vegetables and legumes head a different way. Meats go into the main artery, into a walk-in freezer the size of a U.S.-style grocery store, and then into the main hall where meat is cut, marinated, and prepared.

Food goes in, food goes out. Silicon goes in, silicon goes out. It’s an endless flow, a river of revenue that keeps this factory in business. The poetic among us would see some parallel in the hapless pigs being led to slaughter and then stir-fry to the lives of workers “trapped” on the assembly lines, but I see little more than folks eating lunch and, as Foxconn changes, those people may not have to eat at the company cafe much longer.

Fascinating.