ethics vs. profitability

[Damon]

this one is drawing alot of fire in another forum that i'm a part of so i thought i'd drop it in this one was well. enjoy.

i'm interested mainly in the business end of aquaponics, so here are some questions that have been proposed to me over the last few years. granted my responses are going to be my personal opinions and will be open to full discussion.

Does being a back yard warrior of aquapopnics qualify you to give training sessions for profit?

depends on what you're training. if you're going to train people on how to do what you've done, then by all means train away, but if you only have a small back yard system, then you shouldn't be selling advice on things like commercial systems. although in theory they are the same things just on different scales, but one small system is a far cry away from a full scale commercial system. the general rule of thumb for me is like a pay grade,you can advise below what you're currently at, but shouldn't ethically go above what you've already accomplished.

the sale of unbacked, theorized production numbers as facts.

this is an easy one, if you haven't actually done it, you cant claim to be able to do it, so you shouldn't sell products like manuals and kits without proper record keeping and time stamped photo evidence. there's alot of people out there claiming that they can grow things in just 4 weeks from seed to harvest... well.. unless you're talking microgreens, im not convinced...

and last but not least for now, and my personal favorite...

the exploitation of a 2nd or 3rd world countries labor force to seek proper profit margins.

now here me out on this one... while creating an aquaponics business in any 1st world country is looking harder and harder with the increase of a federal minimum wage, 2nd and 3rd world countries with no minimum wage base leaves the proprietor free to pay what ever they want...

but here's the twist.

lets say the average wage in the united states is around $8 per hour now, and the average wage of some 2n or 3rd world country is $2 per day. with that being said, you start your operation in the 3rd world country where you could pay $2 a day per person for labor, but you actually pay them $4-$6 a day which is 2-3 times the national average.

you're still exploiting the 2nd and 3rd world standards of wage, but you're giving these people jobs that pay twice to three times as much as they would be making other wise, all the while securing you high profit margins.

on one hand it's socially unacceptable to exploit these people, but on the other hand it is socially acceptable to pay them a higher wage than average.

if anyone else has more questions of ethics having to do with aquaponics feel free to chime in, because i know i haven't hit them all.

[tpilk]

Interesting...

I think you're missing a couple of key factors in your thoughts on exploiting developing countries. First, depending of course, on which country, there is virtually no market for selling produce (at least not for profit) in most of these. Fish can be caught for free in all of the ponds and rivers. In Asia, South and Central America and even parts of Africa, they have year round growing seasons. Most of the poor people are already farming, be it rice or whatever. Virtually everyone grows their own and the market price is nothing. It would be very hard to exploit anyone in that market, at least in an AP application. You couldn't possibly make a nickel.

Where AP might be a good fit is in drought ridden climates and/or extremely poor soil conditions. Feeding villages or ophanages are applications people might take on in third world countries. But once again, not in the exploitation sense.

Here in Thailand, there are some fairly advanced hydroponics operations, with restaurants paying high dollar for "organic" ingredients. Same market for the "organic" fish production. Those employees are hardly exploited, they've got good jobs, safe working conditions and make good wages. I've visited a few, as well as Aquaculture operations to learn more going into AP. The reality is that in most of the countries I am involved in, a foreigner can't even own a business. It's a national who would profit, if there was one.

I've certainly not been to all of the 3rd world countries, but I've lived and/or worked in over a dozen, mostly in Asia. I've seen and read about people having tried and tried again to engage locals in some westernized farming technology, to include Aquaculture. Nearly always, it falls on its face and they go back to traditional methods.

If you want to discuss ethics and exploitation, you should research the Jade mines in Myanmar or the brick yards in Dhaka (Bangladesh). These are two countries I regularly visit. It's worse than what you might have seen on TV. In fact, Westerner's are no longer allowed in the North half of Myanmar because of the slave camps. The Chinese and Russians are shredding the land up there and the Burmese forced labor is disposable to them.

In the big picture, I don't think AP ranks very high (yet) in the world of unethical behavior.

Cheers

[Damon]

there are some countries that import most of their produce. note i said 2nd and 3rd world countries. these places, normally turned into vacation destinations because of their natural beauty. think Jamaica, but not quite there. also places like most of india, because that country isn't quiet all like Dubai and most of the middle eastern countries as well could be exploited in this way. easy shipping route to other more well to do countries and ever their own capital cites have a very stark contrast from the bulk of the countries when it comes to economic wellness.

and like i i said above, it wont exactly be the mistreatment of the workers, it's just the fact that you'd be paying them less based on their region. doing a job for far less than someone from somewhere else would be doing it for, but still be doing better than the people are doing locally.

[Pugo]

I agree with tpilk I have seen no westerners exploiting 3rd world employees. I lived in the 3rd world for years. I have seen them take advantage of western people that didn't know what they were doing but not the other way around.. Now there are local company's that sell to corporations I know they exploit there own people.

[JohnMc]

Damon,

Is it exploiting someone at $5/day when their alternative is to pick through the garbage dump for a living? That is a fact of life in many 3rd world countries. The question is, are the workers treated fairly at a wage at competitive or better for their local labor market. The next question -- are the locals acquiring transferrable, actionable skills?

The question of a BY aquagrower being capable of teaching courses. Yes. But it is a matter of scale of course. An experienced grower might be able to consult on a scale up to 4x their own holding for example and not break a sweat. Where I think the real change comes from is the shift in emphasis. For the principled BYA the primary interest is providing fresh items for home with a little left over. At that scale packaging and marketing are non issues. Scale larger than that the empasis is riveted to markets. That shift in emphasis may not be something that the BYA is prepared for or capable of handling.

Just some thoughts.

[Damon]

i pretty much just posted this up to show some of the unethical behavior that i've been noting over the last few years surrounding aquaponics.

if anyone has noticed anything else please feel free to add to the list.

another one that really chaps my @$$ is the bloating of numbers to make for a better selling point.

on the farm that i was working on for nearly a year we broke things down into 3 categories when it came to the lettuce harvest and sellable product. we called these categories firsts, seconds, and waste.

the firsts were the well formed lettuce with not imperfections thus qualifying them for sale to the masses. the seconds were the lettuce that, while still edible, had slight imperfections and some spotting and couldn't be packaged and sold. and the waste was obviously the inedible lettuce.

now in the eyes of business the seconds also count as waste since it cannot be sold at the market.

now that being said, lets say that you harvest twice a week and 200lbs per harvest of sellable product. along with that sellable product you're also harvesting 100lbs of second per harvest and 100lbs of waste per harvest. making your sellable product 400lbs a week, 200lbs of second, and 200lbs of waste.

now, is it ethical to say that your system produced 800lbs of lettuce in that time frame considering that in the scope of business half of it isn't sellable product?

yes, the system did provide 800lbs in one week. yes, it was all grown at the same time, but not all of it can be counted as sellable product.

people are playing this number game with potential investors... this is like saying that i can make two meat ball subs at the same time but one hits the floor... yes, i did make two of them, but only one of them is viable for sale.

i bring this up because the projected mass of lettuce vs. the actual sellable yield rate of the farm i was working on were a long ways apart from each other... also technically correct in saying that we did produce around 800lbs of lettuce per week, only 400lbs of it was able to be sold.

messing with the numbers makes investors believe that they'll have 800lbs of lettuce to sell on a weekly basis, when the grim reality is that not all of that 800 pounds grown is going to be able to be sold...

this is the difference im seeing across the board when it comes to back yard growers trying to just scale up their numbers by multiply their growing space and power up to scale... just because lettuce is growing out of a hole in the raft, that doesnt mean you can automatically count it as a sellable product. yes a system with a million spots to grow lettuce in it will grow around a million heads of lettuce, but how many of those heads of lettuce are actually going to qualify as sellable product?

this is basically one number that is bloated to insure that people buy one manual over another... if i tell people that i "can grow 400lbs of sellable product per week," and someone else says, "i can grow 800lbs of lettuce per week," how many people do you think are actually going to catch the difference in the language being spoken?

[Earthan Group]

this is basically one number that is bloated to insure that people buy one manual over another... if i tell people that i "can grow 400lbs of sellable product per week," and someone else says, "i can grow 800lbs of lettuce per week," how many people do you think are actually going to catch the difference in the language being spoken?

Yeah I doubt that is entirely correct Damon.

If a farm has capacity to grow 800lbs of lettuce per week, it does. The management of that farm and the skills of the people may not be able to get 800lbs of saleable product, but the farm or system is capable of growing it.

For example with fish farming:
Grower A and B have identical fish farms.
The farm can grow 100 tonne of fish per year.
Grower A has a 70% survival rate.
Grower B has a 30% survival rate.

I have seen this and it comes down to the skills of the grower, not the system itself.

[Damon]

no, what it comes down to is the fact that you will always have a failure rate and to base business plans off of the amount of heads grown and not different scenarios of failure rates if deceitful.

if you have a million holes in your system you can plat a million heads of lettuce. but that doesn't mean that all 1 million of them are going to produce a sellable head of lettuce.

mixing in the waste weight with the sellable product weight and calling it production power is a deceitful number... just because you're farm can grow 800lbs weekly that doesn't mean that all 800lbs of the lettuce is sellable product.

even in fish farming you have a certain amount of fish that are deformed that you simply cannot sell to a market because no one wants to buy a fish with a crooked spine or 3 eyes, or extra fins... yet, those fish were produced in your farm. they are a part of the total weight raised in a set amount of time, but you cannot count to deformed fish as part of your sellable production figures because they cannot be sold.

it's basically the same thing i see pig and cattle farmers doing here in ohio... when it comes down to selling time the local farmers weight outside of bulk food stores like GFS (gordon food stores) waiting for them to throw out the expired little debbie cakes and other sweets. they feed their live stock this nutrionless food, but it adds weight tot he animal in the form of fat. you cant eat the fat... well you can but most people dont, but since you cant look inside of the animals you buy the livestock not knowing that a larger percentage of the animal than expected is just wasteful fat.

i can take all of the lettuce i grow, keep the dead and dieing leaves, weight it all out at the end of the month, and call it production weight, knowing full well that no one is going to eat the leaves with spots and slime on them.

[JohnMc]

Damon,

The only one who would be fooled by this level of trickery is either someone who wants to be fooled or is a complete noob. Anybody who has been in business or Ag knows that there is a given % of waste. Earthan Group pretty much lays it out. What that % of waste is, is to the skill of the grower to either minimize it or take that waste and turn it into a valuable input somewhere else in his operation.

I would not ascribe a gross capacity quotation as being deceitful.

[Damon]

most of the people looking into aquaponics are business people that are looking at gross figures that dont normally come from a background of perishable products.

the man im building a budget for was from the oil drilling industry that saw gross production numbers, and was being sold gross production numbers by a guy in the UK... when i started to explain to him about the waste of production he stated that he was never told about waste...

so we cant assume that just because we know that not all produced weight will be sellable product that everyone else does as well.

not all waste is useful, and not all waste can be negated.

what we all must remember is at one point we were all knew to this, and helping out the new people shouldn't be seen as a chore or task, but a duty for those who have knowledge. we should also do what we can to get ride of the people making false claims, no matter how transparent they may seem to the people the know better, because there will always be people that don't know what's going on.

the simple fact of the matter is people are buying into false ideologies when it comes to aquaponics. yes, some people are very unaware of all of the commercial aspects and yes, some people are preying on that fact.

what we all must remember is that at one point we were all new at this. and we shouldnt look at helping out or protecting the new people to this science as a chore. without the growing numbers we'll lose possible insight that could lead to the advancement to aquaponics... we should be here to warn people against all false claims, no matter how transparent they may seem to the people in the know, because there will always be those people that wont know any better.