Top Trends in Sustainable Aquaculture

Top Ten Trends in Sustainable Aquaculture

Transcript

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 episodes. Hello, and welcome to the business of agriculture podcast. This is the podcast for the Sustainable Business movement in the Aqua farming 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 oceans ecology, 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 a collaboration in the aquaculture industry. I'm Laura scant your host.

Lourdes Gant  1:25  

Hi, everybody. I had four weeks of rest from the podcast. And I am delighted to share with everybody that that 15 trends in the business of agriculture coming from the season one interviews are available. So you can now download that directly online. And the link is www dot sustainable agriculture.ca slash top trends. And you'll be able to see the top 15 trends in the business of agriculture. But at the same time, I also wanted to share what they are because I think it's worth mentioning how this correlation and amalgamation of experts are able to give us these top 15 trends. So I'd like to start with the first one seasteading. So this is from a book from joke work. And we think of floating nations, which are now being built upon the sea are going to restore the environment in which the poor cure the sick and liberate humanity as they become free from overburdening land base and governments. So this book is based on idea that when you're in the sea, so they call it seasteading, which is a take from the word homesteading, because some of the countries that done this did it beautifully. Case in point, Singapore when they started actually being an island, they become more productive, lesser interference from several factors that has been affecting the country's productivity, government bureaucracy, and other interferences. So this was kind of the model that this book is talking about. So that's trend number one, see steady. 

Lourdes Gant  3:20  

Trend number two, ecologically beneficial seaweed and shellfish aquaculture. So the nutrient grant off from human occupation along our shoreline is creating artificially high micro algae blooms that are feeding on these nutrients. This is upsetting the natural ecology. Maybe most of you know that maybe some don't. on a large scale, low density, seaweed and shellfish cultivation, which feed upon these excessive nutrients and blooms will produce massive amounts of food for humans, all the while helping to rebalance the ecology here in North America. Right now, seaweed is the darling of the industry, but we have to call it that. And it's very famous right now. Lots of blank bass conversations around this topic. And of course, with the challenge of food production, shellfish as well is coming on board, even though it's been quite a while that we've been wanting to promote how polyculture which is actually our other trend. Other terms around it. It's called integrated multi trophic aquaculture. This will be experiencing explosive growth in the near future. And it has the economic potential to produce massive quantities of food all the while helping to maintain and improve upon the health of the ecology of the ocean. 

Lourdes Gant  4:43  

Another trend is feeding the poor. There are hundreds of 1000s of hectares of subtitle area along our ocean shorelines here in Canada that are suitable for filtering a species such as Greta clumps, which of course I'm biased, because that's the species that we specialize in. Once you get up into that kind of economies of scale, you no longer are just feeding the reach, you are also feeding the poor. And as you know, this is also in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on ending poverty in all its forms everywhere. 

Lourdes Gant  5:15  

So the next trend that I want to talk about is diversification in location. If you grow all your crop in one geographical region, and that area becomes susceptible to political or ecological problems, there may not be much you can do. So you're going to see more large companies diversifying into different areas all around the world. I remember, we used to live in Mexico and we were investigating how can we grow our shellfish in that geographical area compared to how we grow here in Canada. So we'll be seeing more companies diversifying in different countries. I'm wondering if we explore production of gooey duck in Australia, if that's even feasible, because they have sharks there, and we work under the ocean. So I don't know if the divers are going to be scared or this is going to be a good challenge for them. 

Lourdes Gant  6:08  

For the next trend is large company expansion, you're going to be seeing or you probably already saw, the mom and pop aquaculture industry is fading away in the developed countries. So we're going to see the larger companies exponentially expanding within the agriculture industry. At the same time, subsistence level local fishing economies will be moving into agriculture a sir shoreline fisheries collapse from factory fishing encroachment. And I don't know if you're familiar with some of the docks that's happening around the globe in the business world, but special purpose acquisition companies or specs have gotten really famous since COVID hit. And this is also contributing to how mom and pop companies in aquaculture industry can take advantage as well, because you can have a spec sponsor, and automatically, the company becomes more large scale because of the support from the spark sponsor. 

Lourdes Gant  7:10  

The next trend is agricultural technology. This has been the main top trend from all of the guests who was interviewed in my podcast technology, of course in the future will do more than just produce food, it will also be used to reduce or mitigate negative environmental effects. And of course, talk about nano bubble precision, aquaculture, Internet of Things and other movements will become career choices in their own right for people seeking work in the aquaculture industry. And at this point, I actually would like to also bring in the concept of society 5.0. Because society 1.0 was the hunter gatherer stage, society 2.0 was when the agrarian reform happened. And then society 3.0 is based on the Industrial Revolution and society. 4.0 is when there's information technology, and now we're seeing more and more companies who are thriving because they have entered the imagination society. That's why Elon Musk is thriving. That's why Jeff Bezos is thriving everything for imagination, as you saw how Uber took off, and they were able to be leading edge in what they're doing, because of the imagination, creating the product line or the services that they've rendered to the economy. I'm mentioning this because Japan introduced society 5.0 in 2019, and most of the businesses that are able to catch up to become in the imagination, society, society, 5.0 will thrive in this coming decade. And there are five technology that are emerging that you're already seeing. So agriculture technology is just part of the green technology. You're hearing a lot of sustainability talk, and we're in that agri tech, agriculture technology. And then there's also the medical technology, med tech, and of course, you've heard broadly FinTech, financial technology. And then there's a space tech as well. 

Lourdes Gant  9:20  

And all of this is part of the society 5.0 I mentioned greentech, which leads me to my next trend. Sustainability lingo. greenwashing is helping people to distinguish in a genuinely sustainable from the knock offs. So sustainability is becoming a cliche. So some of the new hashtags or wordings that you're seeing, especially in North America is climate positive, future positive, responsible agriculture, restorative agriculture, responsible seafood. So all these new marketing lingo around the word sustainability will be shown up more and more. So, be wary of that. It's still not as much as I know, in Europe or in Asia, sustainability is still the word that they're using. But you'll be seeing this trend in the next decade of changing the word sustainability. 

Lourdes Gant  10:18  

The next trend is on traceability and transparency. So these concepts will also help make greenwashing more noticeable, as well as build increasing trust by the end user in the quality of the product. These two concepts of traceability and transparency will also aid in the development of a healthy genetics. And then it will lead me to my next trend in terms of blue philanthropy. Everybody in the industry, you would probably want to have to give their social contribution wanting to do something meaningful with their money as immense wealth becomes increasingly concentrated into fewer hands will help accelerate the development of the sustainability movement within the aquaculture industry. That's a good thing. 

Lourdes Gant  11:01  

The next one is one of our guests calls it blue carbon credits setup. And it's like you get brownie points if you are being clean energy right clean, in terms of what you're doing in the industry and growing government support took your marine and microplastics pollution working symbiotically with philanthropy as part of the blue economy strategy will increase investment into the right kind of aquaculture. 

Lourdes Gant  11:29  

The next one is meat cultivation, responsibly sourced high quality protein from the sea will reduce the pressure on land base meat production, you're probably already seeing I think I remember seeing the other day that Singapore came up with the first plant base beef. So it's interesting how that will cascade in the seafood industry, or probably already did. 

Lourdes Gant  11:52  

One of my favorite trends is increased collaboration. Because as I probably I don't know, if I mentioned the three pillars of sustainability that is device's leadership, partnership and stewardship and increased collaboration is in the second pillar, which is partnership. So reconciliation, social justice movements, indigenous partnerships, ecosystem management, better technology. And then of course, if there's more educated people, better supply lines and adaptive management strategies, this will all speed up the advancement of the agriculture industry. That is my favorite trend so far. And then the last three shorter production cycles, so part of the aquaculture technology will involve shorter payback period and increase in productivity. And then of course, there's the recirculating aquaculture system, land base, aquaculture and close containment will bring agriculture closer to major metropolitan areas, reducing transportation costs and creating a metropolitan local food system. This is one of the most invested in terms of what's going on in industry right now is the rest system. And last, and absolutely not the least is the shift in consumer trends. So if you go to fish 2.0 dot org, there's an investment insight there on consumer trends. And I think the global aquaculture Alliance also had a webinar on consumer trends, especially after COVID. But of course, you've noticed people are starting to cook more at home and are becoming increasingly conscious of what they're buying. They want supportive the package safe, healthy food with a low carbon footprint. 

Lourdes Gant  13:33  

So I kind of did like a sprint of all the 15 top trends from the interviews that I did. But go ahead, download the report, www dot sustainable agriculture slash top trends and you'll be able to see this report. No need to put your email no op in that link, you will get the report right away. So I am looking forward for a second season. And I will bring you my first guest in the coming weeks. And we have some high profile people in the agriculture industry said yes, when I invited them. So I'm so excited to share with you season two, and take care. I'll see you soon. Bye for now.

Lourdes Gant  14:22  

Thank you for listening, and I hope you are inspired from 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