SPEAKERS
Lourdes Gant, Steve Meller
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 Aquafarming and 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, 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 of collaboration in the aquaculture industry. I’m Lourdes Gant your host.
Lourdes Gant 1:25
As an aquaculture business, how do you merge sustainability and the aquaculture industry? This episode is dedicated to answering that question. So listen in and I hope you enjoy this episode. If you listen to episode eight, Research Scientist Chris Spears discusses US government funding in Canada to support your aquaculture activities. I especially like the feed conversion ratio he mentioned in that episode. So if you haven’t listened to it yet, go and listen to that last episode. Welcome to episode nine, season two of the business of agriculture. In this episode, I’m grateful and delighted to have Steve Meller, who is the CEO of CH4 Global Inc. Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve Meller 2:07
Thank you very much. And I’m really pleased and thrilled to be here.
Lourdes Gant 2:11
I hope that I mentioned your last name properly. Miller or Miller
Steve Meller 2:15
Meller, M-e-l-l-e-r, I thought so.
Lourdes Gant 2:19
Steve is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, innovator, founder, and board advisor after a successful career in corporate and academia. Welcome again, Steve. Thank you. Ch for submission is to meaningfully impact climate change at scale today by harnessing the power of asparaguses seaweed to reduce methane from cows and making it easy for farmers to adopt. Wow, okay, that’s such a big intro. Right?
Steve Meller 2:49
There’s a lot in there is a lot in there.
Lourdes Gant 2:51
So maybe I can get started before I dive into the questions that I sent you. And you thought about something along the lines of how did you get started with this ch for?
Steve Meller 3:03
That’s a good question. And I think it’s a matter of one of those occurrences in our life, I was in the right place at the right time, in the right frame of mind. I retired from corporate life almost 10 years ago now. And in retirement, I was living in Silicon Valley, got involved in a variety of interesting opportunities in different ways, including with the Australian Government. And at that stage, the Australian Government csro, one of the national research organizations, and actually a Canadian researcher who had joined them about 10 years ago was understanding this seaweed, this asparaguses seaweed, he had been studying it for a while. And they really had uncovered some of the early evidence that said how profound the benefit would be in ruminant animals in that case initially in sheep and cattle. And I was doing some consulting work for them and became aware of this under NDA. But three or four years ago, nobody cared about me thing at all. And life has moved on. And a couple of years ago, it became clear to me that I was living in California, the governor, had just mandated a 40% minimum reduction and methane output from ruminant animals. And so I knew there was a market. I knew there was a great technology that csro been working on and understanding. And so I thought, you know, three years ago, almost three years ago now’s the time to think about growing this at scale, supplying the market. We know it’s safe. We know it’s effective. We know there’s a market. My background at Procter and Gamble said I can bring those things together and create the opportunity and bring it to scale. So in fact, I’ve recruited in almost 200 years of p&g experience retirees, key people in all sorts of different roles into my team, enabling us to sort of build the product portfolios for the market, that are really going to be out Have the impact we want to have on climate change at scale. And with urgency.
Lourdes Gant 5:04
Wow, talk about when opportunity meets divine timing. So I’m gonna get started with the question because this is in line with what you already said, What’s your advice to small businesses wanting to embark on sustainability and technology in the agriculture industry,
Steve Meller 5:21
this is a really important one because there’s a lot of people I think, today struggling with the impact of climate change, both today and what’s coming in particularly young people. So I think about small businesses are more often than not started by folks certainly younger than me, looking for ways to be able to have an impact. So I think my two pieces of advice are to make sure it’s your passion. You have to live and breathe this, this has to be fundamentally a core part of who you are and what you want to do, and why you want to do it. Because it’s going to be tough, you’re going to encounter all sorts of resistance, whether it comes from policy or corporates, you’ll be frustrated with the progress, all of those things will happen and many more, that will feel like their turns that you don’t really want to take and I think your passion and your dedication and commitment to the goals that you want will be that which will get you through. So passion is one. And the second, I think is likely equally as important, but very different, is to make sure you’re solving a problem, the world needs to be solved. You don’t want to be working on something that may be a great innovation in science. But now it’s looking for a problem to solve or a place to fit in, you’re better off if you match your passion with something that is in fact, an impactful problem. Impact doesn’t have to be on a massive global scale. It can be on a regional and community scale. All of these things are important as we advance what we need to do on the planet. And we can all do our part in there so passionate, ensuring it’s the right problem would be the two things I would give you.
Lourdes Gant 7:04
That’s really very important what you said there, especially when you mentioned about looking for ways to make an impact and impact is not necessarily mean on a global scale. I was originally from the Philippines and we always have a saying charity begins at home if you can make an impact, homebound first, and then it can cascade just with that tiny little pinch. Exactly. So my second question then is how would you solve the bureaucracy challenge that regulates the industry so the business is not hampered by rulings? And I know it’s, it’s a big and heavy question. So I did is I added to this one as well in terms of they’re also rulings that are actually helping the industry. So either, both.
Steve Meller 7:49
So in the industry, we’re in, which is we grow seaweed aquaculture. Primarily we’ll be growing it in the ocean, but we’ll also grow it in land-based tanks for a variety of reasons. Because not all of the countries in the world have ocean frontage. And certainly, not even those that have ocean frontage have this species as a native species. So for us, we can only grow it in agriculture and regions. It’s native, very important. Otherwise, we contravene a variety of United Nations by diversity acts. So we need to understand where we can do what we do. And so in those communities, understanding those regulations, but also we grow the seaweed, really for an impact on ruminant land-based animals. We’re really a climate change company that happens to use seaweed in our products that can have an impact on cows, sheep, goats, camels, and alike. Really, cattle is the largest output. So for us, those regulations fall across aquaculture, land-based agriculture, and climate change. So it gets really complex how we think about this. To give you an example of a positive ruling, Denmark just announced and I believe it was yesterday’s 2030 goal of reducing emissions from agriculture by 50%. And I believe that’s one of the first countries in the world to focus on agriculture reductions in emissions to that scale. I’ll contrast that with some trepidation on the other end in New Zealand, where there’s a reluctance to really talk too much about reductions in methane from agriculture. They’ve set goals of 10% by 2030, I think they are grossly underserved in that. But you’ve got an attempt now by regulations to make positive impacts and allow opportunities to see how you could fulfill it in there. Now on the other side, the world is struggling with how do we think about climate change. And we fit into that because what we do on a global scale is hugely impact impactful, there is more greenhouse gas output on an annual basis, from the 1.5 billion cows on the planet. That is the entire greenhouse gas output of the country of China. There’s more than the entire country of the United States plus the EU, plus India, the numbers two, three, and four meters put together. So this is a massive global opportunity. I don’t call it a problem, because we can’t stop having cows as a source of protein. They are integral to what we need, and we have a growing gap in protein sources. So how do we make them more efficient, that’s what we do provide more milk and more beef, but also reduce climate impact. So that gets us into a whole bunch of regulation issues around there that we probably don’t have enough time to. So for us, the path we’ve chosen is the path of least resistance for us with the path of least resistance, where in the world can we do this, where we adhere to the regulations that exist with speed, and that’s actually in Australia at the moment. To validate, prove out what we’re doing, and show others this is both safe, effective, and impactful.
Lourdes Gant 11:09
That sounds really good in terms of what you guys are doing to haul these challenges. But on another note, we have just been bombarded with documentary in our industry that sees piracy. And I believe this was also the case with where your industries, how did the industry, I guess, gave feedback about the cowspiracy documentary, would you mind share,
Steve Meller 11:34
I am probably less aware of how the industry has really thought about it from an aquaculture standpoint. And as I said, we don’t think of ourselves as an aquaculture industry, more of a climate change, right. And so things that happened in there were certainly involved in and try to make ourselves aware of, so I can’t really probably give you a really good answer to how the industry is thought about it. I’ve seen things all over the place, but it’s probably not a safe space for me to go into too much. So
Lourdes Gant 12:06
that’s all right. And I really appreciate the honesty there, too. So my next question is, what’s one thing you think will still be here and will not change a decade from now
Steve Meller 12:16
more? Well, if you want to, if you want the pessimist in me, that would-be politicians and inaction. And I hope that’s not true, I really do. But the evidence says otherwise, we have been talking from a political standpoint globally, for 50 years, since the world’s first Earth Summit 1972 50 or so countries, and now, every sovereign nation in the world coming up at COP 26, in about three weeks in Scotland, and we’ve had cop one through 26. And we’ve had a Kyoto Protocol. And we’ve had a Copenhagen agreement, and we’ve had a Paris agreement at COP 21. There’s been a constancy of discussions of how we think about it. But what I can absolutely tell you is with no deflection in any way, shape, or form, the concentration of co2, generally caused by fossil fuels at the moment in the atmosphere has been arising, has not changed. So sadly, there’s a lot of talks. And there’s really no meaningful level of action on a global basis. And we’re really at a crisis point now. So I’m hopeful that cop 26 does cause some changes on a global basis that allow meaningful changes over the next nine years. But I’m also skeptical that we’ll really get there because the evidence says we won’t. So I think that’s probably my biggest thing that I think is still going to be there a lot of lobbying from faction groups that don’t want things to change the oil and gas industry doesn’t even though we only have 50 years of reserves left, just want to keep going. And so so I think the complexities around that we’re making progress, but I don’t think sufficiently enough. So I think it’ll still be in our way in 10 years’ time. Sadly,
Lourdes Gant 14:12
that is very unfortunate. Considering that as a species, we made so much progress in where we are right now. And we’re still kind of backward to say that
Steve Meller 14:23
I hope I’m wrong was I really do I’d love to see coming out at the end of November, world headlines that, that the world’s leaders have agreed on these incredible goals. And they’re still only goals, we still actually have to put them into action and do them. But at least the goals are there and the framework they’ve agreed upon to allow those goals to happen. I’m quietly hopeful, but I’m also a realist. So we’ll see where we are in about six weeks from now.
Lourdes Gant 14:54
Right. And I really appreciate all your answers here because my husband is a realist himself. So I like to think that when people talk about, I wouldn’t say the negative side of things, I guess the other side of things, it’s good to ponder on those because that’s also where our brain leads us to solutions.
Unknown Speaker 15:12
It’s where the opportunities where we see, you know, again, I use the word pessimists, but it’s really important across there. So it’s, it’s where the opportunity is to influence and how we want the world to move. So
Lourdes Gant 15:27
thank you. Thank you again for saying that. So my biggest takeaway from this session is when you really mentioned solving a problem, I think a lot of people mostly in business sometimes get in love with their product or their services that they forget that the most important thing or here does is to solve a problem. So thank you for reminding us all of that. Where can they get in touch with you?
Steve Meller 15:52
So I hope I’m pretty easy. I’m Steve at ch for global.com. That’s my email. I’m happy to take questions people call me if they like you could find me on Twitter. It’s at Steve Meller, I’m on LinkedIn. Under Steve Malossi, h4 Global you can find me in there so happy to communicate and connect with people. If I can help people better understand their passion and what they’re doing. I’m more than happy to connect.
Lourdes Gant 16:25
Thank you so much for your time today, Steve, to our 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. Thank you so much, Steve, really appreciate it. Thank you. And I hope that we’ll have a conversation again very soon.
Steve Meller 16:45
Me too. Thank you very much.
Lourdes Gant 16:50
Thank you for listening, and I hope you are 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 your thoughts across social media and tag us for links and Show Notes for this episode, visit our website www dot sustainable aquaculture.ca slash 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.
