Increasing the resilience of oyster farms to disasters

Objectives

1. To create a new Oyster Farming Resilience Index (OFRI) that accounts for a variety of disasters and emerging needs.
2. To facilitate the use of the “index” with members of the oyster farming community within Alabama and Mississippi to identify common vulnerabilities.
3. To use results from the index to identify operational areas that may be lacking in institutional capacity and provide technical support to increase the resilience of the oyster farms by delivering engagement and education programs that better equip industry members in addressing common vulnerabilities.
4. Conduct a summative evaluation to assess the outcomes of the project."

Methodology

The first step will be to review existing aquaculture and fisheries resilience related documents and select a pool of relevant indicators which could be adapted to create an oyster farming resilience index. The advisory committee (AC) will be engaged to review indicators and identify those which could be used by oyster farmers. The AC will also assist in identifying new indicators to fill gaps in information. The process described will lead to the drafting of oyster farming specific indicators organized into broad categories (e.g. business planning, hazard planning, marketing, workforce etc.). Two members of the project team will coordinate in-person, farm-level meetings with 31 farm owners from Alabama and Mississippi to complete the OFRI. A total of 35 of approximately 50 licensed farms in Alabama and Mississippi will complete the OFRI including the 4 farms who participate in the pilot test.

Farm owners who agree to participate will be encouraged to invite other employees to participate. Each farmer who participates in the meeting is eligible for a $100 Visa card to compensate them for their participation. Meetings will be scheduled to accommodate the schedules of the farms. The information learned in achieving objective 2 will guide the development and delivery of specialized trainings to farm employees. Team members will organize at least two workshops, one in Mississippi and one in Alabama that will be open to farmers and potential farmers located in either state, with the goal of providing targeted technical assistance to improve institutional capacity within the region’s oyster industry. The workshops will be half to full-day events, with presentations from industry specialists and financial professionals. A summative evaluation will be conducted during the last quarter of year two of the project. The summative evaluation will be used to determine how the OFRI and training sessions benefited farmers and farms.

Every oyster farm completing the OFRI will be asked to complete an online summative evaluation. The summative evaluation will include an online survey sent to all participates of the OFRI facilitated meetings and trainings and in-depth interviews. Survey results will be analyzed using a mixed methods analysis. The summative evaluation will be a valuable way to determine the overall effectiveness of the OFRI and methods used will met the goal of the project and if oyster farm resilience increased. A second summative approach will be reassessing some of the farms which completed the OFRI and then participated in follow-up trainings. It is expected that a farm completing the OFRI a second time after addressing one or more of their vulnerabilities would score higher the second time. A random sample of 25 percent of farms who completed the OFRI will participate in a second OFRI self-assessment.

Rationale

In the past, Mississippi and Alabama seafood producers have dealt with many environmental and manmade disasters that have affected the region’s ability to supply seafood. The COVID-19 pandemic, economic recessions, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, coastal storms, extreme rain events, and harmful algae blooms all have had significant negative impacts on the seafood industry including the oyster farming industry. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique challenge that is unlike any the region has faced in the recent past. While past events significantly disrupted seafood stock and supply, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruptor for seafood demand and the distribution chain for seafood products. Data from INTRAFISH indicates that restaurants would lose 25 to 30 percent of total sales relative to 2019. The significant disruptions the pandemic has wrought upon U.S. restaurants means that seafood producers are faced with a major disruption in seafood demand and to the traditional seafood delivery model. Many farmers are still reeling financially because of reduced revenues and many restaurants not paying for product. It is expected that 2021 will also be a difficult year for hatcheries and many may face bankruptcy, and failures at the hatchery level could slow the recovery of the industry for years to come (Bob Rheault, personal communication). The resulting long-term fallout from the pandemic means that new ways of increasing the resilience of the oyster farming industry is needed. Increasing the resilience to disasters will increase the sustainability of the oyster farming industry. Disaster resilience has many variations on a general definition of a communities’ ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events (Cutter et al. 2013, Thompson et al. 2012, UNISDR 2005). Increased resilience may occur at the community, business or individual/family level.