SPEAKERS
Lourdes Gant, CYR Couturier
Lourdes Gant 0:05
As a business owner of an aquaculture company, how can you take the first step to be profitable and sustainable at the same time? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. Hello, and welcome to the business of agriculture podcast. This is the podcast for the Sustainable Business movement in the Apple forming an ocean ranching industries. This podcast aims to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs addressing the United Nation global goals, aka Sustainable Development Goals number 14, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and the seas. Listen to fellow business agriculturists in their journey in this new model of food production of making their business sustainable, and helping the ecology of the ocean, while also making a profit all at the same time. Get inspired to learn how even small to medium businesses can make an impact to save the CCE. Leave a legacy and have a better quality of life. One of our goals is to take away a nugget of wisdom that will help your business move from the industrial revolution to business 5.0. Our vision is that of collaboration in the agriculture industry.
Lourdes Gant 1:17
I’m Lourdes Gant your host. As an aquaculture business, how do you handle the science behind the industry for promoting collaborative partnerships? This episode is dedicated to answering that question. So listen in and I hope you enjoy this episode. If you listen to episode 14, we had Jennifer Bushman, who is a sustainable agriculture expert, culinary talent and author. She’s one of the food and lifestyle industry’s most respected consultants, communicators, marketers, and strategies when it comes to sustainable aquaculture. Welcome to Episode 15 Season Two of the Business of Aquaculture. In this episode, I’m proud to interview Cyr Couturier, the Welcome to the show Cyr.
Cyr Couturier 2:08
Thank you very much.
Lourdes Gant 2:09
Cyr is a marine biologist, agriculture scientist in the School of Fisheries from Marine Institute Memorial University at St. John’s Newfoundland. Welcome again to the show Cyr,
Cyr Couturier 2:20
thank you very much for the invitation, I’m looking forward to all of your questions.
Lourdes Gant 2:25
I’m excited to know and pick a little bit of your brain today. So maybe you can get us started by giving a piece of advice to small businesses wanting to embark on sustainable aquaculture or green technology in the industry.
Cyr Couturier 2:39
Well, I’ve been involved with aquaculture for over 40 years. So even though I look very young, obviously, I’m a little bit older in the youth category. But if I had to give any advice as to anybody starting up currently in the aquaculture business in Canada, in particular, but also in other countries is that it is a business, you have to have the wherewithal about how to do business, don’t even start your farm until you know where your fish or shellfish or seaweed is going to go. If you have a market outlet. So having pie in the sky ideas about producing small amounts of high-value fish is great. But it’s gonna take you at least a decade to work out the bugs and to be actually profitable, and support your employees, and so on. And so that’s the advice to go in with eyes wide open, and with a bit of business acumen. And it’s a great sector to be involved in, in all parts of the world and Canada in particular.
Lourdes Gant 3:39
Thank you. I haven’t heard that advice. But it’s very, very much grounded in reality, I think I probably would not have lasted in the industry if I didn’t have a business background. It’s very important what you mentioned about having eyes wide open, I’m very much a Pollyanna, but I also have my feet on the ground. It’s very hard to be in the industry, I guess if we’re all just pie in the sky. So thank you. That’s very practical advice.
Cyr Couturier 4:07
Well, nice. Other things too, I would say Lourdes is that having my eyes wide open is good. But that also means understanding the regulatory frame in which you’re operating. So it’s not just having a business background, but hiring, I guess the best people to give you advice. If you’re the promoter, the small business person that wants to start a business, you won’t have all the answers. So you have to hire competent people in both the farming, the biology of the organisms, your farming, the technology, as well as in financing. Obviously, if you have a business background, you can deal with that. And thirdly, really you have to have an understanding of the regulatory frame and this does differ from jurisdiction. Of course.
Lourdes Gant 4:55
That’s great that you mentioned that because that’s my second question talking about the regulatory framework and I do agree with you, it’s very pertinent in this business to have the best people to give us advice because we can do things on our own I came originally from the Philippines I mentioned. And so it takes a village not just to raise a child, but to be raised in this industry, which leads me to my second question, how would you solve the bureaucracy challenges that regulate the industry? So the business is not hampered by rulings? Or for those regulations that actually serve the industry? How to take advantage of that?
Cyr Couturier 5:30
I guess there’s a couple of potential quick answers to that question. We all know, I guess, people in the industry that have been involved for any amount of time know that there, there is a regulatory burden to producing fish seaweeds or shellfish. So the idea is not to reduce the red tape, but it is to reduce the red tape, obviously, so that businesses don’t incur this heavy regulatory burden. That one of the issues, I think, maybe globally, but maybe also, generally, is that in different jurisdictions with, let’s say, we’re talking about Canada, both the provinces and the territories and the federal government have responsibility for aquaculture, okay, in various aspects of aquaculture, whether it’s food safety, biosecurity, land ownership, or water leasing, and those sorts of things. And unless you have those departments and agencies well connected within a country, for example, then you’re going to run into a lot of regulatory burdens, and sometimes even some, some legislation or some regulations that are not really in agreement with one another, for example. And it’s going to be a big headache for you as an industry. Now, that’s not to say that each province and territory, and country has the same issue.
Cyr Couturier 6:54
Okay. We can highlight different countries that have national aquaculture acts that support aquaculture, both at the regional state provincial level, or county level and federal legislation that are that also supports it as well. And these areas do work hand in hand with aquaculture. So in this regard, you know, if we look at the salmon scenario, in Norway, Chile, and even in North of England, in Scotland, local authorities work hand in hand with federal authorities. And those regulatory frames tend to be more in agreement with each other. So that’s one way that you could reduce the regulatory burden is by having the feds and the province, you know, the regional and the federal come to an agreement as to what their responsibilities are, and what their roles are in promoting this vibrant, sustainable food production activity. And so there are a number of countries and jurisdictions where this can be seen clearly, with the advent of the blue economy, UN Decade of the oceans now, and SDG 14 that you highlight all the time, Life Below the Seas, I think it’s increasingly important to realize that on a global scale, virtually every coastal nation in the world supports aquaculture, and it’s its own jurisdiction. So how do you harmonize all of that, and so that can benefit the people on the ground, the people that live in the villages and the towns and the communities that want to benefit from this, we know that our natural resources of fish fisheries are over-harvested in many areas, or they’re harvested to sustainable levels. We also know that lots of illegal unreported and unregulated fisheries occur on the planet. And so the future of aquaculture is essential to feed the people the planet, to provide sustainable food, but also sustainable jobs.
Cyr Couturier 8:51
I don’t know if you’ve had a look recently at the UN’s mandate, or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, but they clearly state that any more seafood that’s gonna come out of the seas or even from land, land-based operations, is going to be sort of the wave of the future, right? Because it’s healthy aspects. And it’s sustainable, low carbon outputs and those sorts of things. So it actually now is the time for Canada to take advantage of that and stop putting roadblocks and having differences of opinion on the way forward. In fact, from my perspective, because I’ve been at this for so long, even though I’m a youth, we shouldn’t be fighting about this. There should not be federal-provincial fights. I mean, this is for the people of Canada and the rural areas of Canada, across the country. So all parties, whether in a province or territory or a nation need to come together and say this is the way forward okay.
Cyr Couturier 9:50
We want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Well, what you have to do is aquaculture and it’s got it in spades, you know, from agrifoods If you want to feed people healthy food, safe and healthy food, and sustainable food, aquaculture ticks all those boxes as well. And so where I get a little frustrated is when we play politics about this, and it really it’s not a political issue. And the reality is, it’s a really important issue for Canadians in particular for food security for Community Living for rural areas of the country, whether your country is in the north of the country or on the coasts. And I do know that every province in this country does support seafood farming, whether it’s land-based, ocean-based, or net pen based in lakes and the Great Lakes. So let’s just get on with it and promote it.
Cyr Couturier 10:49
Canada, used to be the 1980s used to be in the top 10 or 12, producers of seafood globally, we ran our cod fisheries into the ground we ran in many of our other fisheries are being closed now the salmon fisheries on the west coast of Canada, because it’s not managed, or it’s not manageable. At this point. We’ll also salmon fishery in the east coast of Canada, 30 years ago, we can’t really sit something like 24th in terms of seafood production on the globe, yet, we have such huge resources that he could be global leaders in seafood production, okay. And not just from harvesting seafood, but also from farmed seafood. So I would advocate anybody who’s listening, particularly on the provincial or the federal side, that why don’t we grasp this opportunity to become leaders in sustainable seafood production, what’s holding us back, and one of the things that are holding us back is our regulatory frame, and our complex regulatory system. And I’ll just leave it at that.
Lourdes Gant 11:50
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Those are really really good insights, especially saying from the top 10 in the 80s. And now we’re at 24. That’s kind of sad, knowing the pristine waters that we have here in Canada. And I am grateful that I live here. And so hopefully we can get back on track. So my last question is, what’s one thing you think we’ll still be here in 10 years,
Cyr Couturier 12:14
What will still be here and 10 years from now is net-pen aquaculture for sure. And ocean-based aquaculture, mariculture, and combinations thereof. So shellfish production, in the marine environment, seaweed production in the marine environment has great potential, not only for carbon sequestration but for producing sustainable food. And there seems to be a growing demand in North America. And of course, net pan aquaculture of finfish Samanas, in particular, in the Great Lakes, and, of course, on the east and west coasts of the country. So this will be here. And I’m hopeful that people will see the light and that all of those sectors of marine aquaculture will continue to grow.
Cyr Couturier 12:57
What I don’t think we will see in 10 years or large scale land-based production facilities for food fish, because, as you may already know, a lot of these operations that are operating, and try to produce large scale 10s of 1000s of tons of Atlantic salmon, for example, on land in Miami and other places. Really, they you know, that this promise was made 10 years ago that they would be at large production volumes. And they still haven’t worked out the technology. There are still some, I guess, biological and fish health reasons why that’s not achievable. If you look at the cost of production, that’s still very much higher than producing it in its natural environment, for one, or your box in a salmon in a tank and try to grow at the market size, high quality, flash, you know, all these sorts of things, basically increasing the density and for anyone to say they don’t have production issues are the costs are lower. I would call him on that because we’ve, our federal government, as well as a whole variety of people, have looked around the world and they’ve been looking at this for some 30 years. And we still don’t have a recipe for sustainable land-based production to market scale in large volumes. Of course, the production facilities that do exist in Canada that produce salmonids are other species that, you know, let’s say that 200 to the 500-ton range.
Cyr Couturier 14:24
Our friend there, Steve Atkinson, British Columbia, you know, his thought is that it took him 10 years to figure it out to produce 100 200 tons in a raft system, a recirculating aquaculture system. And so what he’d like to do is replicate that model, you know, 100 tons at a time and smaller modules. And that might make some sense, but you’re definitely not going to be able to feed and make money for the large demand that we have just in Canada alone. You’re going to need 300 football fields worth of RAD systems to produce what we consume in Canada alone in their retail across the country. So how the heck are you going to do that in 10 years? I mean, doesn’t make sense. So what I’m not going to see in 10 years is large-scale production facilities for land-based production of salmon and particularly Atlantic salmon. But what I’m going to see in 10 years, and I hope to see and I’m confident we will see his increased growth in the marine sector, net pen culture of finfish, as well as seaweed and shellfish. So let’s keep our fingers crossed because that’s the promise of the future.
Lourdes Gant 15:31
sounds great. Well, thank you so much for being here on the show such the knowledge and wisdom that you shared with us. My biggest takeaway was when you talk about harmonizing and working hand in hand, I think in any industry, this is imperative. Thanks again, seer. And I hope that I talk to you again soon. For our listeners, Sears is on Twitter with the handle at Aqua Canada. Was there any other way that you’d like them to contact us here?
Cyr Couturier 15:57
No, you can contact me on that Aqua Canada, my DM is open. And I’ll usually respond fairly rapidly, even if it’s an insult or some advice. And now it’s all about transparency. Really. I like to be transparent, and I like to be open to suggestions, and comments and critiques are always welcome.
Lourdes Gant 16:21
Thank you so much, again, for subscribers do leave a review of the podcast so we can get more people to be aware of the value our guests are providing in these conversations. If you’re new to the podcast, I’d like to hear from you. I’m taking a break for December, but we’ll start with Season Three in January 2022. Thanks, everyone. Thanks again, Cyr. Appreciate your time today. Thank you for listening, and I hope you are inspired by this episode.
Lourdes Gant 16:47
Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway from this conversation has been? What are you going to do differently? Please share thoughts across social media and tag us for links and show notes for this episode, visit our website www duck sustainable aquaculture.ca/podcast Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode and together we can help create a better Business in Aquaculture