Maine shrimpers were granted a longer fishing season this year than they’ve had in several years, the stocks were plentiful and the shrimp were large and high-quality.
A perfect year? Hardly. Markets were small, buyers were few and many fishermen earned as little as 25 cents a pound for their catch, when they could sell it at all. A few fishermen, speaking at a shrimp conference during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport in early March, said the sometimes dumped their catch overboard.
If shrimpers are willing to market their product the way Maine’s small farmers have there’s hope, they were told.”We face a lot of the same challenges,” said Russell Libby, executive director of Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association for more than 10 years, speaking at the conference. “You have to have a story to tell the consumer. You need face, place and taste.”
“The place is easy,” said Libby, educated as an economist at Bowdoin and the University of Maine. “Maine is one of the three places in the country with a national reputation for high-quality food. The others are Vermont and Northern California.” He has operated Three Sisters Farm in Mount Vernon for 20 years and is a former research director at the Maine Department of Agriculture.
Libby was invited to address the conference by Craig Pendleton, agroundfisherman and shrimper who heads the North Atlantic Marine Alliance, a nonprofit organization promoting innovation in fisheries and management. Pendleton said multi-species fishermen like him face a dilemma when it comes to shrimp: re-rig the boat and stop groundfishing and take the gamble of earning much less money on shrimp, or skip the season and fail to have a historical catch record that could cause them to lose their shrimp license if quotas are set.
When regulators cut the shrimp season to 28 days three years ago, many state fishermen opted out of shrimping. Processors couldn’t get product and most went out of the shrimp-processing business altogether and markets dried up. Last year, Cozy Harbor in Portland began processing Maine shrimp again, and while they’re not the only ones buying now, they’re the biggest buyer and markets are still limited (WWF March 06).
This year the season was set for 140 days, but prices to the boats were far below prices ten years ago.”I met these farm organization guys. There’s no difference between the family farm and family fishing ventures,” said Pendleton. “They were invited by Sysco (the country’s largest food supplier to restaurants) to Houston for a conference. They learned the two focuses for the future of food are local and high-quality.”
“Across the country the push has been for uniformity” in food products, and not only in the U.S.,” said Libby. “In 2010 there will be five supermarket chains in the developed world and the only U.S.-owned one will be Wal-Mart.”
What the small farmers or fishermen can offer the consumer is a different product, or a tastier product, and a product that comes from a place they know.
“I know apples better,” Libby said. “But Maine shrimp, because they disappeared from the market for a couple of years has lost the taste recognition. You need to do direct marketing.” He urged shrimpers to sell at year-round farmers’ markets in the state. “Your product fits the time of year when farmers don’t have very much. There are maybe 4,000 people who buy all their food outside supermarkets through community-supported agriculture. They’re committed to local markets. Hook up with them.”
As for putting a face on things, he pointed out that ” Jim Cook is the face of his marketing co-op” in Aroostook County. “He’s 6′ 8″ and he plays to the image. He’s the picture of a Maine potato farmer. To people in Greater Boston, their image of a Maine potato farmer is Jim Cook.”
“One of the first questions Cook always gets when he shows consumers new products, is `What do you do with them?’ ” said Senator Dennis Damon, co-chair of the legislature’s Marine Resources Committee. “If people ask the Maine Lobster Promotion Council what to do with lobster, they tell them.” Maine lobster license holders pay a fee to support the MLPC.”Give them recipes,” said Libby. “Taste is the proxy for quality for consumers. If a recipe is for stuffed shrimp, Maine shrimp won’t do. Give them recipes that work. You have the place, you can easily put a face on it and you must market to get the taste out there.” He warned fishermen they can’t count on any government agency to be their permanent ad agency, but said Maine chefs would be happy to supply recipes and the Internet makes them cheap to distribute and easy to reproduce.He also noted that a chef at the Harraseekett Inn in Freeport received a lot of publicity for selling shrimp cooked in the shell. “There are newspapers out there with food sections to fill every week. Get them to write about Maine shrimp.”
“One of the things we’ve looked at is the Maine Lobster Promotion Council,” said Proctor Wells, the Phippsburg fisherman who introduced the panel and speakers. “We have to educate the consumer. Maybe we could form a seafood promotion council. When my mother-in-law goes to the supermarket and takes a can of Peruvian shrimp off the shelf [the industry has a problem],” he said, “but to get into markets we need consistency.” Without a guaranteed annual season, he added, fishermen and processors couldn’t maintain and supply their markets.
Preston Pate, Jr., director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and chairman of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, told the Maine audience, “If it wasn’t for the funny way you all talk, I’d think I was home in North Carolina. We face the same challenges.”
He said North Carolina shrimpers, who lost markets and saw their prices devastated by cheap imported farmed shrimp, “attacked the problem at three levels.” First, they joined the Southern Shrimp Alliance “to level the playing field” by successfully pressing for tariffs on imports. Second, “we worked with Sysco and Wal-Mart to put more domestic product in the market.”
But their third effort “we’re most excited about,” said Pate, is the “Fresh from North Carolina Waters” program, which is aided by the state department of agriculture and has its own logo.
“We’re really getting some traction,” Pate said. Shrimpers are also marketing their catch locally, by county.”I think these niche markets are the way to go — you have identified all the things you need to do.”
A woman in the audience pointed out that many markets now seek `clean’ or `green’ products and label the origin of seafood, adding the Maine shrimp fishery could have a marketing edge with the natural food stores because “it’s cleaner than most.”
“We have to think out of the box about marketing this product,” remarked Rep. Leila Percy, a panelist who is co-chair of the legislature’s Marine Resources Committee.