Your can improve improve sustainability in your supply chain- through FIPs

I’ve recently started reexamining my relationship with supply chain, fisheries, and Fishery Improvement Projects, aka FIPs. This has been my journey.

It’s been a while, but I still remember the “What’s a FIP” stage. You may still be there- most people are. At that point I was a buyer of foodstuffs, already in a box. The negotiation was for price and quality. If it came from a FIP, someone was making it more sustainable- great! I didn’t dig in too much. 

Then I started to actively source from FIPs. We tried to join some at that point, but the results were very spotty as I did not understand all the drivers and couldn’t ensure that we could be an active contributor.  A low point was when we paid the dues for a FIP but then couldn't source from the fishery because our supply partner decided to drop out of the FIP. That was painful!

When Stavis became a member of Sea Pact (www.seapact.org) it was a tremendously enlightening and empowering experience. Sea Pact solicits grant funding requests. Together with our NGO partners Fish Wise, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, and Ocean Outcomes we all started analyzing the funding requests. This allowed me to really understand all the players and the working parts in FIPs as well as to figure out what types of FIPs Stavis Seafoods (and Richard Stavis) could enhance through our participation. 

I got involved in the feedback loop as www.fisheryprogress.org was created and got off the ground. Now the information about a good percentage of FIPs is centrally located, well explained and well organized. You can even create a list of FIPs that you follow on the website and check in on them regularly!

This past week I discovered a fishery whose FIP seems to have unraveled about 5 years ago. I am going to see if I can get a couple of other industry partners to get it reactivated. I think that we might be able to do it!

Take my journey, too. We can all become empowered to improve just about any fishery. It just takes investment, more emotional and sweat equity than money to begin with! Thank you. Email me at [email protected] or [email protected] if you want to compare notes with me or learn more.