Food Sources Under Siege: What We Knew is No Longer True

Everything which used to be reliable and stable in seafood has changed… so what's next?

Professor Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University wrote an engaging book some decades ago titled How We Know What Isn’t So. It’s about our human propensity to form beliefs which were never true.

That’s a bit different from what’s happening in the seafood industry right now, where quite a bit used to be true, but isn’t so any longer. Nearly everything traditionally reliable about the seafood supply chain has now changed.

These aren’t misperceptions. Truths we used to rely on have been thrown overboard.

Case in point:

What Used To Be So…	…What We Now Know
Our labor force would turn over, but was generally stable and returned year after year	We face constant worker shortages in plants and in ports
China’s processing industry was an insatiable source of raw material demand	China’s Zero-COVID policies idle processing facilities, killing demand
Fuel and transportation costs would fluctuate but over the long term were fairly predictable and inflation was a non-issue	Fuel costs are almost 50% higher than a year ago, influencing transportation and other costs of doing business
Growing openness between nations increased economic interdependency	War drove international sanctions, closing the Russian market to outside seafood

Is there a war on the global seafood supply chain? Probably not. Does it feel like there’s a war on the global seafood supply chain? From inside the industry, facing this volatility and the invalidation of our prior means of operating, it can absolutely seem that way.

Seafood companies need to rethink processing. We need to seek new markets to replace the old ones which are now closed. We need new trading partners who are open for business. We care about the location of trading partners more than ever before because of port and transportation cost issues.

Essentially, seafood companies need a new way to do business. And given that change seems to be the one thing which is consistent, the new way of doing business needs to enable our businesses to become more nimble than they are today – the best thing we can do is prepare our businesses to withstand future volatility.

Are you ready?