Exploring the Resilience of Oyster Aquaculture in New England

1. Exploring the Resilience of Oyster Aquaculture in New England Photo credit: ecsga.org Photo credit: Glidden Point ,website: oysterfarm.com Photo credit: thefishsite.com Brown Agricultural Resilience Initiative (BARI) Advisor: Kathy De Master Jim LaChance MA Candidate 2012 Center for Environmental Studies

2. Key terms: • Resilience • Describes the re-embedding of social, environmental, and economic values into food production in an effort to enhance overall farm viability, foster rural development, and improve the industry’s ability to persist in the face of outside disturbances, such as the changing climate. • Multifunctionality • Concept that emphasizes the secondary benefits of agriculture “beyond food and fiber,” the “social and ecological dimensions of agriculture,” and is “alternative to industrial agriculture” (McMichael 2011); • Terroir • Territory and heritage-based initiatives often incorporate the French idea of terroir, or distinctive aspects of a good that are determined by both a taste of place (environmental characteristics like soil, sediment, and climate that are specific to a certain geography) and its production technique (the human dimension of taste, as determined by local know-how or a specific means of cultivation), to create a high quality and sustainable product.

3. Research Questions: Might a territory and heritage-based initiative within regional development policy have the potential to increase the resilience of the sector, especially considering the context of the changing climate and its potential effects on coastal ecosystems? How do formal and informal linkages between growers align with dimensions of territory and heritage to possibly foster the resilience of the industry? Overall, what are the opportunities and barriers for re-embedding social, environmental, and economic values into the food system?

4. Beyond the Re-localization Movement: 1.) Multifunctionality, re-embedding, and terroir in E.U. and U.S. contexts • (Barham 2003; Trubek and Bowen 2008; Bowen and De Master 2011; van de Kop 2006; Mettepenningen et al. 2011; Van derPloeg and Roep 2003; Jacobsen 2008). 2.) Ecological Aquaculture and Agroecology • (Costa-Pierce 2002; Costa-Pierce and Page 2010; Perfecto et al. 2010; Altieri 1995) 3.) Climate change • (Ford and Smolowitz 2007; Miller et al. 2009; Doney et al. 2009; Barton et al. 2012) 4.) Economic clustering • (Porter 2000; Martin and Sunley 2003; Fujita et al. 2000)

5. History and Current Context: The Whaleback Midden Intensive Gear-Culture Photo credit: Wash-a-Shore oyster farm Photo credit: oysterfarm.com “Pitting” in Wellfleet Photo credit: diaryofalocavore.com Photo credit: diaryofalocavore.com

6. Regulatory Context: • Complex regulatory structures vary by state • RI Example: • Permitting agencies: CRMC (lead agency) and RI DEM • Preliminary determination: • $25, business plan and vetting at the town, state, federal and NGO level (USCG, USACE, US and RI Fish and Wildlife, RI DOH, Town officials) • Commercial Aquaculture Application: • 30 day public comment; notice to stakeholder groups; if any objections filed, then public hearing • If approved, receive CRMC permit, bring to RI DEM for 2nd permit • $150/1st acre, $100/additional; performance bond (min $5k) • MA by town; NH annual renewal

7. Extended Case Method: • Understand the social context; reflexively build “the general from the unique” (Burawoy 1998) • 58 in-depth qualitative interviews: • 16 key informants • 42 growers (approx. 10% of growers in New England) South of Boston, Cape Cod and the Islands (18/280): North of Boston through Maine (10/72): Rhode Island (8/30): Connecticut (6/24):

8. Methods (con’t): • Participant Observation: • Attended festivals, Milford Aquaculture conference, enrolled in weekly Shellfish Aquaculture course at RWU, attended public hearing for new lease at RI state house, and visited leases and hatcheries • Analysis: used Nvivo software and coded for key themes • Ate oysters! Photo credit: wash-a-shore oyster farm Photo credit: oysterfarm.com Photo credit: wash-a-shore oyster farm

9. 6 Key Findings: • Understanding of the biophysical and cultural aspects of terroir “Barnstable harbor is the Napa Valley of oyster growing,”…“I think you can take it a step further and call it a Bordeaux” (Author Interview 2012) “Narragansett Bay is our Napa Valley” (Author Interview 2012) Table 1. Biophysical and Cultural Factors of Terroir

10. 6 Key Findings (con’t) (2) Interest in protecting the names of oysters while having a diversity of product available on the market “Oysters are such a marketing thing, it’s like a microbrewery where you go in and you get fifty different beers on tap. That’s what people want to see when they go in to a raw bar…We all sell the same species, but they taste a little different, look a little different, and we all brand them different“ (Author Interview 2012) “They’re different. Not everybody likes Budweiser” (Author Interview 2012) “Can you go into any restaurant and say, I'd like to try 5 different cheddar cheeses, or 5 different apples? There's not many things you can do that with, and oysters are one of them” (Author Interview 2012) Photo credit: ecsga.org

11. 6 Key Findings (con’t): Photo credit: ecori.org (3) Desire to keep producers in the region small-scale “So if someone gets greedy and […] they’re trying to turn it into the Walmart of oyster farms, they’re gonna get burned, and they’re gonna get burned hard, and they’re gonna burn other people with them. You know, jobs. So the best thing to do is...a small farm for a family or a little group of people, and spread the risk out up and down the state so …you’re not overwhelmed if there’s an outbreak in one particular estuary” (Author Interview 2012). “What we don’t want to do is turn this into a feedlot or a super industrial thing” (Author interview 2011). “I’d love to get gigantic and hire a bunch of people. I want to turn Tiverton into a big agro-industrial area…[laughs]…no, but I think there is room for growth, certainly. But you have to do it properly. You have to be careful” (Author Interview 2011). (4) Commitment to environmental stewardship and environmental quality “Well, there’s the fact that oysters are nitrogen sinks; they sequester nitrogen. That’s probably the biggest one, because nitrogen is, as I understand it, our most prolific pollutant in our estuary and waters” (Author Interview 2011).

12. 6 Key Findings (con’t): (5) High-level of social and economic linkages Growers would "call each other up," or "drive their boat over" to a neighbors lease (Author Interview 2012). “Hand-shake” partnerships around pieces of equipment (graders, tumblers, etc.) (6) Sharp awareness of climate change, both present and potential effects “But there’s going to be some bigger issues here than me trying to keep a couple oysters alive in this little pond if [ocean acidification] happens. Mother Nature can’t keep up with how acidic the ocean’s become” (Author Interview 2012). “Yeah it's changing. I don’t know if it's conscious, but you sit there in the back of your head you think, ‘We used to do this different.’“(Author Interview 2011). Photo credit: saltpondoysters.com

13. Discussion: • Branding and trademarking already exist; territory and heritage-based initiative would have to incorporate these names. • Diversity of product finding suggests that a labeling initiative would have to accommodate this diversity, and not reduce it. • Alternative and multifunctional production techniques have a plethora of social and environmental benefits; changes to certain regulations could facilitate growth in sector. • Understanding of climate change could facilitate integration with multifunctional initiatives aimed at mitigation and adaptation; furthermore, this adaptation might best take place at the hatchery-level. • Formal and informal linkages could foster involvement in a multifunctional initiative. Photo credit: ecori.org

14. Conclusions: • Beyond re-localization, the unique territory and heritage of oyster aquaculture in New England could be utilized by a multifunctional initiative to potentially foster regional development and increase resilience of the sector • Unlike Trubek and Bowen (2008), my findings suggest that regardless of the impetus for the local movement the region is rich with opportunities to increase its resilience through a multifunctional initiative; example of EQIP • The re-embedding of social, ecological, and economic values associated with oyster aquaculture into the food system, and into the region, must overcome barriers of public perception; oyster cages need to be seen in the same traditional light as lobster pots

15. Thank you! Photo credit: ecsga.org

16. Locations of growers in sample: North of Boston through Maine (10/72): Massachusetts (18/280): Connecticut (6/24): Rhode Island (8/30):

17. Embeddedness vs. Marketness “Double Movement” - Polanyi’s concept of the “double-movement” suggests that when an attempt is made to disentangle social, environmental, and economic values from the market, a point of contradiction is reached and society reacts by attempting to protect these values and re-embed them. Resilience, sustainability, and embeddedness - discussion often revolves around a spectrum of "embeddedness" and "marketness," where the embedding of social, economic, and environmental goods in the marketplace operates in inverse proportion to the marketness of the good (Block 1990; Hinrichs 2000; Jaffee 2007). • “High marketness means that there is nothing to interfere with the dominance of price considerations, but as one moves down the continuum to lower levels of marketness, nonprice considerations take on greater importance. It is not as though prices are irrelevant under conditions of low marketness, it is just that they compete with other variables, so that one would expect price difference to be much larger before they led actors to respond.” (Block 1990)