Inspiring greener shrimp farming in Ecuador, Thailand, and around the world
Inspiring greener shrimp farming in Ecuador, Thailand, and around the world
Many people don’t realize shrimp farming is more carbon-intensive than raising chicken or pork. Bain partnered with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a global conservation nonprofit whose fisheries and aquaculture divisions tackle environmental and social issues such as this. Bain helped TNC design and launch pilot programs in several regions.
These teams helped develop and apply that sustainable model
Bain’s consulting team led the case, supported by other teams which collected and analyzed shrimp industry and consumer seafood preference data. They helped TNC design and launch pilot programs in several regions to produce shrimp more sustainably.
These teams helped develop and apply that sustainable model
Bain’s consulting team led the case, supported by other teams which collected and analyzed shrimp industry and consumer seafood preference data. They helped TNC design and launch pilot programs in several regions to produce shrimp more sustainably.
-
Advanced Analytics Group (AAG)
AAG data scientists helped design and execute a survey to understand consumer seafood preferences.
-
Bain Capability Network (BCN)
BCN supported the case team by analyzing the results of a consumer survey to present recommendations.
-
Bain Marketing
The marketing team helped circulate the story of Bain’s work with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to inspire other businesses to do the same.
-
Finance
The Finance team plays a leading role in Bain’s decisions on real estate, talent, technology, acquisitions, and more. They supported this project with contract and billing expertise.
-
General Consulting
Consultants led the case. From Chicago, they began studying the market and developing a framework for interventions. They also launched pilots in two regions with very different shrimp farming practices: Ecuador and Thailand. Throughout the project, they worked with TNC leadership to help their large fisheries and aquaculture divisions achieve their full desired environmental impact.
-
Product, Practice, and Knowledge (PPK)
The PPK team documents Bain cases, outcomes, and knowledge so every team can bring the best of Bain to bear. For this case, they provided the team with detailed information on relevant prior work. Once the case team had launched the pilots, they ensured that other Bain teams working on similar issues could access these insights and stories, to inspire clients and invite additional perspectives.
-
Research & Data Services (RDS)
The RDS team conducts research into the vast world of second and third-party data. They helped the consulting team conduct research into the shrimp market and consumer seafood preferences.
Background
Shrimp are one of the most-consumed seafood globally and are also among the most unsustainable. The shrimp industry’s carbon impact is higher than that of chicken or pork. This is due to three factors: deforestation, feed, and fuel. Shrimp farms are often built by clear-cutting ecologically valuable mangrove forests. Shrimp are often fed fish, which themselves either require carbon to raise or run environmental and social risks to catch, and farm equipment such as generators and boats guzzle diesel.
For all these reasons, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is focused on making shrimp farms more sustainable. They have a partnership with Bain that’s part of their goal to push the world’s aquaculture to greater sustainability by 2030. TNC and Bain initiated a project to investigate all the ways shrimp are farmed to craft a toolkit to help a broad range of farms reduce their carbon impact.
Developing and testing the plan
Bain’s consulting teams kicked off a case in Chicago to investigate how shrimp are produced around the world. They conducted retail store visits to understand the types of products shrimp producers should be selling and conducted broad surveys to understand how to position them with US consumers. This work produced a broad framework for interventions which the team applied to farms at opposite ends of the spectrum—big industrial farms and tiny smallholder ones.
That shrimp farming model identified three major climate-affecting factors:
Farmland—Are shrimp farms replacing ecologically important mangrove forests?
Feed—How sustainable is the shrimp feed?
Fuel—Are aerators, boats, and equipment diesel-powered?
The consultants aimed to produce an open-source toolkit that any company could apply. “We want to address the world’s toughest sustainability challenges and create systems that show everyone that sustainability is good business,” says Sasha Duchnowski, partner at Bain and the executive sponsor for this project. “We then share what we find because we want others to copy this work.”
The Bain and TNC teams first applied their shrimp farming framework to industrial shrimp aquaculture businesses in Ecuador, where the shrimp farms are so large, they require a helicopter to survey. There, they discovered that scale means the relative carbon impact was naturally lower. However, they were able to reduce it even further by convincing farmers to feed their shrimp deforestation-free soy, purchase solar-powered aerators, and more.
Then, the consulting team found a second opportunity to apply the framework to smallholder shrimp farms in Thailand.
-
How could Bain change behavior throughout the value chain?
-
How could Bain bring existing stakeholders together to do this work?
-
What retailers would be interested in carrying sustainable shrimp products?
-
Could lessons from Chicago and Ecuador be applied to Thailand?
-
What was TNC’s five-year vision for this project?
-
What would have to happen for that five-year vision to come true?
Applying the approach elsewhere
Based on the opportunity in Ecuador, the team focused its expertise on opportunities in Thailand. Consultants traveled there to tour farms and understand the situation firsthand. In Thailand, there are far more shrimp farms, many of them quite small—sometimes just a pond operated by one family. These smallholder farmers had few resources and, because they often cleared mangrove forests, their operations had a higher relative carbon impact. The interventions here would need to be very different.
Bain used the knowledge from its onsite visits plus the global research on consumer preferences to bring various shrimp farming stakeholders together for discussions. They built a fact base on demand dynamics in Thailand and the US, shortlisted interventions to implement, quantified those proposed interventions and their financial impacts, and looked for intervention partners who could bring additional, necessary technology.
Along with partners, they defined a pilot program, analyzed what it might achieve at full potential, and launched it. The data seemed to quickly confirm that by swapping in more sustainable feed and introducing new equipment and practices, they could significantly reduce smallholder farmers’ climate impact.
The results
The Ecuador and Thailand pilots are now underway and have brought together farmers, financial institutions, non-profits, and retailers around three shrimp product segments. If they prove successful, TNC and Bain can repeat this model across other Southeast Asian countries, and elsewhere around the world. The hope is that all this shrimp aquaculture work, from Ecuador to Thailand, achieves the trifecta of good—reducing climate impact, helping farmers, and helping consumers—and that other organizations copy it and transform this market.
projected reduction in carbon footprint along with potential financial benefits to farmers
Bainies involved across three continents
