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New Math

The apparent impossibility of getting equitable boat prices for lobster has again been made evident. The 2010 catch was 93 million pounds. The price was low, bumped up a bit, but could not out pace the price of fuel. A lot has changed in the Maine lobster industry in the last 20 years. The 2010 catch was 3 1/3 times larger, 5 times more valuable and the number of licensed lobstermen 7% smaller than in 1990. This kind of math will not launch a lobster boat into orbit, but it does indicate something ain’t quite right.

Talk about Asian markets for everything in existence is as common as complaints about the boat price. But Asia is there and it will not be dismantling the Three Gorges Dam or deporting thousands of western educated scientists from New Delhi.
China has a food culture. The middle class uses food to boast it has arrived. The more luxurious the food, the more clearly defined the statement. A passing Chinese interest in U.S. grown pecans recently shot the price through the roof practically overnight.

At America’s largest seafood show in Boston this March there were 18 companies from Maine. There were 175 from Asia, the majority from China, 12,000 miles from Boston. Most want to sell here, but many know the burgeoning Asian middle class will want prepared specialty foods, just as ours does. If China’s 1.3 billion people, 41times our 311 million, ate the entire 93 million pound lobster catch, shells and all, they would only get 0.1 ounce, one tenth of an ounce, each.

This math will not help anyone figure out how to raise the boat price, but it’s pretty obvious today that the market for lobster could change radically, quickly and soon. Asian demand for luxury foods like lobster could take lobster off the menu in a lot of New England, but keep boats on the water in the Maine.

Lobstermen will not fully benefit if lobster remains a commodity traded on thin and fragile profit margins. Valuing and treating lobster as the high quality product it is and finding ways to bring together the means of control beyond the boat is key. Some Maine lobstermen are working toward this. Making it possible for more of them is the new math.