Aquaculture fin-clipped by government policies

Saturday, September 30, 2000
The Guardian (Charlottetown)

Aquaculture fin-clipped by government policies: Brudenell River Resort hosts two-day international conference attracting scientists, producers and policy-makers.

BY Steve Sharratt

MONTAGUE — Like Gulliver pinned down by those frightened Lilliputians, the phenomenal growth potential of Canadian aquaculture is being hog-tied because of government and financial policies that are suffocating development.

That was the message delivered on the opening day of How to Farm the Sea, an international conference here that attracted scientists, growers and policy-makers from around the world to discuss theuture of a food source considered by many to be the solution to global hunger. World salmon farming alone is worth more than $7 billion.

“The opportunity is here for the giant not only to wake, but to stretch his limbs,” said professor James Muir, manager of the U.K. quaculture research program at the University of Stirling. “We may very well find that energy and economy become less important than feeding people in the years ahead.”

The two-day conference, filled to capacity with 150 delegates, is being hosted at the Brudenell River Resort by the Canadian Aquaculture Institute at the University of P.E.I. and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

But it was clear throughout the session here Friday that aquaculturists, who grow everything from salmon to shellfish, feel like a poor cousin to their land-based relatives.

Numerous times the discussion focused on the inequity between the soil farmer and the water farmer when it came to the infrastructure of support and policy provided by the government.

While a potato farmer is encouraged to rotate his crops for the betterment of the soil, and can tap into numerous government financing programs and extension services. The salmon farmer can’t. There are no extension services offered and crop rotation is out of the question because of government reluctance to expand the acreage in water leases.

And why does a salmon farmer need to rotate his crop? Because of the buildup of organic matter — fish droppings — that become tremendous mounds under caged fish and can spark disease.

“Site rotation is a traditional tool for agriculture, but a policy issue in our industry,” said Bill Robertson, director of East Coast operations for Heritage Salmon in St. Andrews, N.B. “I can’t rotate my site because I can’t access new sites because I don’t have the opportunity to apply for them. So the tools for us to execute this
enormous potential are not always there.”

Robertson said changes in government policy take such a tremendous amount of time that it actually prevents Canadian (aqua) farmers from being able to respond to market needs. He outlined a series of policies and regulations that are still on the drawing board 10 years later.

“We’ve gone from a focus on the economics of the industry to a focus on the conservation,” he said. “This is no longer a big, biological experiment, this is a multimillion-dollar industry and it’s starting to stall and needs to grow.”

But critics of limitless aquaculture expansion say the industry has enough water leases and like a land farmer, should properly rotate harvests with exsiting acreage. The market for salmon in North America has been growing at 25 per cent a year since 1996.

However, the actual market share for domestic producers is decreasing — and being replaced by offshore growers like Chile — because of the impediments to expand farming operations locally.

Dr. Brad Hicks believes the government should privatize the ocean floor and allow aquafarmers to get on with business.

“When he couldn’t get by the regulations here, he went elsewhere.

“It really pissed me off that I had to take your (taxpayers’) money and go to Chile to build an industry,” said the B.C. businessman. “But that’s how ridiculous the present policy is.”

Hicks is a former chief operating officer of International Aqua Foods, a B.C. company that went, in 10 years, from $100,000 in sales to farming fish in three countries and generating sales of $40 million.

“There is opportunity here for phenomenal growth but we’re not capitalizing on it,” he said, noting his business partners could fly from Vancouver to Toronto for a meeting faster than he could to reach a company lease on the vastly underutilized B.C. shoreline.

Daniel Stechey, president of Canadian Aquaculture Systems, said much of the conflict against aquaculture expansion is being couched as environmental when it’s really over property values and unblemished views.

“For example, why wipe out all the cod?” said Stechey, a special adviser to the federal government. “We could catch them, raise them, and ensure a future for the species while getting six times the current value for them.”

Stechey told the conference that Canada supplies only 15 per cent of the total U.S. salmon consumption while Chile provides 68 per cent. Mainly because the cost of production and processing is the highest in North America and there’s no room for the Canadian industry to grow.

The conference also acknowledged the issue of wild versus farmed salmon and invited guest panelist Dr. Fred Whoriskey of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. Conservation groups fear the escape of farmed fish will dilute and contaminate the wild strain of natural salmon stock.

“We need some positive cooperation,” said Whoriskey. “Stop the escapes, eliminate the instances of diseases and stop the overcrowding issues. We’re all for aquaculture, but let’s derive all the benefits from both wild and farmed salmon.”

Whoriskey said escaped, domesticated salmon, from sea pens and hatcheries, already outnumber wild salmon in the Bay of Fundy area and farmed salmon introduce non-adaptive genetic characteristics into the wild populations.

But Hicks said Canada’s market share of about 5 per cent of the world’s farmed salmon continues to shrink because governments in this country are heavily influenced by fishermen, environmentalists and First Nations.

“These groups have convinced various governments to continue to strangle industry development with a large variety of barriers,” he said. “At the same time, governments in competing nations have embraced the development of fish farming as a means of creating wealth and jobs from their coastal resources.

‘`It is time for Canada to create wealth for its ocean fishery complex rather than welfare.”

AQUACULTURE GROWING

— Aquaculture industry growing at phenomenal rate around the world.

— Industry participants say Canadian regulations and policies strangling growth.

QUOTE: “This is no longer a big, biological experiment . . . this is multimillion-dollar industry starting to stall.” — Bill Robertson, Heritage Salmon, St. Andrews, N.B.

Saturday, September 30, 2000
The Guardian (Charlottetown)

Aquaculture fin-clipped by government policies: Brudenell River Resort hosts two-day international conference attracting scientists, producers and policy-makers.

BY Steve Sharratt

MONTAGUE — Like Gulliver pinned down by those frightened Lilliputians, the phenomenal growth potential of Canadian aquaculture is being hog-tied because of government and financial policies that are suffocating development.

That was the message delivered on the opening day of How to Farm the Sea, an international conference here that attracted scientists, growers and policy-makers from around the world to discuss theuture of a food source considered by many to be the solution to global hunger. World salmon farming alone is worth more than $7 billion.

“The opportunity is here for the giant not only to wake, but to stretch his limbs,” said professor James Muir, manager of the U.K. quaculture research program at the University of Stirling. “We may very well find that energy and economy become less important than feeding people in the years ahead.”

The two-day conference, filled to capacity with 150 delegates, is being hosted at the Brudenell River Resort by the Canadian Aquaculture Institute at the University of P.E.I. and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

But it was clear throughout the session here Friday that aquaculturists, who grow everything from salmon to shellfish, feel like a poor cousin to their land-based relatives.

Numerous times the discussion focused on the inequity between the soil farmer and the water farmer when it came to the infrastructure of support and policy provided by the government.

While a potato farmer is encouraged to rotate his crops for the betterment of the soil, and can tap into numerous government financing programs and extension services. The salmon farmer can’t. There are no extension services offered and crop rotation is out of the question because of government reluctance to expand the acreage in water leases.

And why does a salmon farmer need to rotate his crop? Because of the buildup of organic matter — fish droppings — that become tremendous mounds under caged fish and can spark disease.

“Site rotation is a traditional tool for agriculture, but a policy issue in our industry,” said Bill Robertson, director of East Coast operations for Heritage Salmon in St. Andrews, N.B. “I can’t rotate my site because I can’t access new sites because I don’t have the opportunity to apply for them. So the tools for us to execute this
enormous potential are not always there.”

Robertson said changes in government policy take such a tremendous amount of time that it actually prevents Canadian (aqua) farmers from being able to respond to market needs. He outlined a series of policies and regulations that are still on the drawing board 10 years later.

“We’ve gone from a focus on the economics of the industry to a focus on the conservation,” he said. “This is no longer a big, biological experiment, this is a multimillion-dollar industry and it’s starting to stall and needs to grow.”

But critics of limitless aquaculture expansion say the industry has enough water leases and like a land farmer, should properly rotate harvests with exsiting acreage. The market for salmon in North America has been growing at 25 per cent a year since 1996.

However, the actual market share for domestic producers is decreasing — and being replaced by offshore growers like Chile — because of the impediments to expand farming operations locally.

Dr. Brad Hicks believes the government should privatize the ocean floor and allow aquafarmers to get on with business.

“When he couldn’t get by the regulations here, he went elsewhere.

“It really pissed me off that I had to take your (taxpayers’) money and go to Chile to build an industry,” said the B.C. businessman. “But that’s how ridiculous the present policy is.”

Hicks is a former chief operating officer of International Aqua Foods, a B.C. company that went, in 10 years, from $100,000 in sales to farming fish in three countries and generating sales of $40 million.

“There is opportunity here for phenomenal growth but we’re not capitalizing on it,” he said, noting his business partners could fly from Vancouver to Toronto for a meeting faster than he could to reach a company lease on the vastly underutilized B.C. shoreline.

Daniel Stechey, president of Canadian Aquaculture Systems, said much of the conflict against aquaculture expansion is being couched as environmental when it’s really over property values and unblemished views.

“For example, why wipe out all the cod?” said Stechey, a special adviser to the federal government. “We could catch them, raise them, and ensure a future for the species while getting six times the current value for them.”

Stechey told the conference that Canada supplies only 15 per cent of the total U.S. salmon consumption while Chile provides 68 per cent. Mainly because the cost of production and processing is the highest in North America and there’s no room for the Canadian industry to grow.

The conference also acknowledged the issue of wild versus farmed salmon and invited guest panelist Dr. Fred Whoriskey of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. Conservation groups fear the escape of farmed fish will dilute and contaminate the wild strain of natural salmon stock.

“We need some positive cooperation,” said Whoriskey. “Stop the escapes, eliminate the instances of diseases and stop the overcrowding issues. We’re all for aquaculture, but let’s derive all the benefits from both wild and farmed salmon.”

Whoriskey said escaped, domesticated salmon, from sea pens and hatcheries, already outnumber wild salmon in the Bay of Fundy area and farmed salmon introduce non-adaptive genetic characteristics into the wild populations.

But Hicks said Canada’s market share of about 5 per cent of the world’s farmed salmon continues to shrink because governments in this country are heavily influenced by fishermen, environmentalists and First Nations.

“These groups have convinced various governments to continue to strangle industry development with a large variety of barriers,” he said. “At the same time, governments in competing nations have embraced the development of fish farming as a means of creating wealth and jobs from their coastal resources.

‘`It is time for Canada to create wealth for its ocean fishery complex rather than welfare.”

AQUACULTURE GROWING

— Aquaculture industry growing at phenomenal rate around the world.

— Industry participants say Canadian regulations and policies strangling growth.

QUOTE: “This is no longer a big, biological experiment . . . this is multimillion-dollar industry starting to stall.” — Bill Robertson, Heritage Salmon, St. Andrews, N.B.