SPEAKERS
Lourdes Gant, Bill Taylor
Lourdes Gant 00:05
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 these episodes. Hello, and welcome to the Business of Agriculture Podcast.
This is the podcast for the Sustainable Business movement in the Aquafarming and ocean ranching industries. This podcast aims to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs addressing the United Nations global goals, aka Sustainable Development Goals. Number 14, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and the seas, listening to fellow business aquaculturists in their journey in this new model of food production, of making their business sustainable, and help 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, save the seas, 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 collaboration in the aquaculture industry. I’m Lourdes Gant your host.
As an agriculture business owner, how do you tackle the balance in being able to run a sustainable business being profitable, but also working with family members? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. Welcome to episode eight of the business of aquaculture. In this episode I’m honored to have Mr. Bill Taylor, who is the vice president of Taylor shellfish farms. In 1890, their family began farming shellfish in the waters of Puget Sound.
Five generations later, they continue to provide their customers with one of the best shellfish in the Pacific Northwest has to offer. Welcome to the call Bill. Thank you. If you listen to Episode Seven, I interviewed Mr. Brian Takeda of Urchinomics, and he discussed how they are sustainably promoting urchin agriculture globally. But today, we’re going to find out from Bill how their family business is able to thrive after five generations. Welcome again, Bill.
Bill Taylor 02:22
Thank you. Thank you.
Lourdes Gant 02:24
I love reading the introduction that you guys wrote about your story on your website or in your grandfather who started this business. Normally, I would ask my guests how they started in the industry. But because I know you started from family, maybe you can share with us your journey from there. Was it a given that you’re going to be taking over and what have you maybe you can start with that?
Bill Taylor 02:47
Sure. Well, my great grandfather started in 1890. And the family has owned tied lands and farm shellfish since that time, my father was wanting to make sure that when we were getting out of high school that we made a decision that wasn’t necessary to go into shellfish farming and wanted us to get out into the world. He made us go to college to university, which was a great experience for me. But I really had a passion for farming shellfish, my brother and I had our own clan business when we are in college and employed a lot of our college friends.
And we grew up from time your little kids digging clams and working in the oysters. And so it was something that both my brother and I enjoyed the work liked I found it invigorating. And when we got out of college, we saw an opportunity, and it got us to come back home and really work. But it certainly was not a requirement that we join the business and follow and in our family’s footsteps. And I think that’s an important thing as I know some families where it seems like it’s an obligation. And oftentimes I think that’s a very poor thing. I think you need to want to do it not necessarily feel like you have to do it.
Lourdes Gant 04:15
That’s quite amazing. Actually, your great grandparents would have been really amazed how you guys kind of have already the genes for it. So didn’t have to convince you to actually do the work. That’s quite great. And from my case, you’re already five generations are kind of still the second generation with ours.
And it’s also amazing how Eric’s second daughter and just started diving for us and she loved the oceans. I can already see she’s following her father’s footsteps, just loving Mother Nature and being able to make a livelihood out of it. So thank you for sharing that.
So when you were in college, when you were saying you were already doing your oyster business with your brother, was it because you wonder if you were probably born in a different family. Do you think you would have gotten into the agriculture industry?
Bill Taylor 05:03
You know, I don’t know that question. I had other things, other things that I really enjoyed doing too. So I suspect that if it wouldn’t have been for that, you probably would have followed different paths. But I’m very happy I went down this path.
Lourdes Gant 05:21
Yeah, it’s quite amazing what your family you have actually done in the industry as well. And everybody’s looking up to how you built this family business to where it is right now. So maybe you can tell our listeners, what do you think are the pros and cons in being in the agriculture industry, considering the progress and what you’ve done to the industry.
Bill Taylor 05:44
It’s an exciting industry. It’s also an industry filled with a lot of risks. From a number of different aspects, you’ve got just the biological aspect of the farming, all the predators that you deal with just animals themselves, and how they are adjusting to changing ocean conditions. And then you have a lot of regulatory issues, community issues that you need to deal with.
And Labor has become particularly here in the past five years or so has become a much larger part of concerns about being in the business. Markets are also concerned. And so I think there’s a lot of reason for optimism, but there’s also you need to be looking over your shoulder all the time because there’s a lot of things that can go wrong and in a lot of different areas.
Lourdes Gant 06:41
Great, you’ve given our audience quite a bit to think about all those. And you’re absolutely right, in terms of having to look over your shoulders is the time because it’s such a dynamic industry. And it’s not something I’ve seen somewhere before in the industries I’ve been in. And one of the things you mentioned was, especially with the workers with the environmental groups with political groups, how are Taylor hatcheries able to sustainably keep the I guess, looking over their shoulders and still continue to thrive? Even? Probably during the pandemic last year? Do you want to share with your audience something different that you guys did?
Bill Taylor 07:25
Sure. Well, there are two things. One is we’ve worked with a number of environmental organizations for many, many years because water quality is a huge factor. And so we’ve particularly for shellfish, oysters, clams, mussels, gooey duck, they need really clean water. And we’ve been at the forefront of advocating for clean water through the legislative and regulatory means that we have, particularly here in Washington state, the pandemic has really brought on a whole different issue.
And particularly for a lot of the markets that we were in was heavily oriented towards restaurants, we were selling to if we didn’t sell to restaurants directly the distributors that we were selling to, and our sales a year ago were 25% in March and April last year of what they had been the previous year. And it really really had a significant shock on our business. Fortunately, here in the US and in Canada, wage subsidies were put in place that without them, I think almost all the businesses I know would have probably been broke. And so those were of huge benefit to all of us.
In this really unusual time where nothing we did create the problem. It was a problem that the whole world has been trying to grapple with here. And so it is much appreciated that the governments have stepped up and put it into place. Fortunately, after that initial shock, markets started to come back. And they’ve come back we’ve seen kind of shocks as we’ve gone through the second and third now the fourth kind of rise of the virus least here in the US. And each time it seems like it’s slowed sales of the most recent fourth wave that is a smaller wave here, at least in the US.
I think in Canada, it sounds like it’s definitely more impactful about with the number of vaccinations that have happened in the US now I sound like about 50% of the adults have at least one shot we’re seeing optimism come up through restaurants in the US are still many of them are still only less than 50% capacity. So we’re anticipating the markets will rebound significantly. Once we get probably into the fall or next year.
Lourdes Gant 10:07
Perfect. Yes, we are also optimistic in terms of what the industry will bring about, I guess a lot of people was forced to go online and just do adapt to the situation that made the industry I think, maybe a year or two ahead in terms of technology of what’s going on in the agriculture, technology space as well. So thank you for that. And my last question to you is, can you probably give us three top trends that you’re seeing that can happen in the agriculture industry in the next 10 years?
Bill Taylor 10:41
One of the things and you mentioned going online, I think, we have always had kind of an online presence, but really worked on promoting sales this past year. And we saw a fivefold increase in sales over the previous years. Now we put a lot more effort into it, just because there wasn’t really chatted, go the other way, go to our other sales. But I think that that gives you a much more direct connection to your customers.
And I think that that’s a good thing in the long run because you can educate people about your products. So I think that that’s one trend that will continue to see on the sales side of things on the regulatory side of our business, I think that we’re going to continue to have increased scrutiny. As we go forward, we have a couple of things as more people move into areas that were farming, you get more scrutiny. And I think that’s one issue, you’ve got changing ocean conditions.
And that leaves for uncertainty in terms of how you’re farming and different changes happening and how that fits into the regulatory concept is definitely something that as the industry evolves to meet that those changing conditions, it has to change its techniques. And how that’s going to fit into the regulatory system is that regulatory system tends to move slow when and these, we need to move fairly quickly.
So I think that continuing dance with regulations is something that we’re going to continue. I think the other part then is really to the biology and trying to work with these animals in really quickly changing ocean conditions to help from a farming aspect to help them adapt, particularly with wasters we’re seeing mortalities that in the last 10 years or so that we have seen a different times, but not with the consistency and just trying to adapt trying to breed these animals so that they can adjust to these conditions, I think it’s going to be a really critical issue.
And I think we’re going to find that other species have different tolerances going forward. And if we’re going to continue to farm them, we’re going to need to be able to adapt to them. So like I said earlier, there’s a lot of reason for optimism. But there’s also a lot of things that you’ve got to be careful of as the environment changes. And as markets change, and you always have to be on top of your game, you’re always walking on the edge.
Lourdes Gant 13:21
Thank you so much, Bill. I really appreciate your time today. And my biggest takeaway from our conversation is I love the way that you use the word dance. And I think in all of your statements in my interview today, it’s that dance with regulation, dance with the animals, dance with the collaboration of people, and even the dance between having optimism and facing what is in terms of the reality of the agriculturist fear.
So thank you again for your time today. Well, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. And for my next episode, we’ll have JP Hastey, who is the president and founding member of Noble Harvest, in which he was recognized as one of the annual top 10 under 40 in the agriculture industry. Thank you again so much, Bill, and I really appreciate your interview.
Thank you for listening, and I hope you’re inspired by this episode. 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 as for links and show notes for this episode, visit our website www.sustainableaquaculture.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.
