Heading North
We were all convened
for a business gathering. Maine
Governor John Baldacci was hosting New Brunswick’s Premier Shawn Graham for a
Roundtable Business Summit in the tippy-top Northern Maine border-town of Fort
Kent. The Summit was held during the buoyant, halcyon days of pre-Great
Recession Springtime. The format involved
the neighboring political leaders bringing with them a cadre of members from their
business communities so that all could discuss common business challenges and
opportunities.
It was a
Saturday event. Being mid-May we had
just begun to harrow our own Potato fields in the previous week. May is universally the most harried month of
the year for North American farmers.
That distills down to the fact that we don’t get around much until planting
is completed in June. On this rare May trip
northward I was surprised by the stark difference latitude had made over the length
of the eighty mile journey to this American side of French Acadia. Spring
had not sprung in this historically francophone point of origin for US Route
One. To use English Aroostook jargon,
no one up towards Fort Kent had yet “spun a
wheel”. My quick calculation was that if Fort Kent’s
growing season was shaved by a solid week in the Spring as compared to us, they
must also stand to lose another week in the Fall. With Northern Maine’s already paltry growing
season to begin with, a reduction by another couple of weeks must present
itself as a steep challenge for area crop production.
Summit Supreme
In the lead up,
our Governor and the Premier were tasked with enlisting business
representatives to attend this one-day Summit.
For a Democrat like Bangor’s John
Baldacci, the pickins’ are slim in Northern Maine as our Dem business bench
runs thin. However, the good Governor
did manage to roust up his necessary contingent. On Team Maine represented independent businesses, including
the owner of a backwoods sportsman camp, the head of a fabricating company which
builds fire engine apparatus and one Organic farmer who grows a little bit of
Maine’s iconic Potato crop. The Governor’s
business group were all hands-on Maine small business owners. We showed up, as rural Mainers typically are wont
to do, dressed casually with open-collar-shirts sans sports coats.
Weren’t we
surprised to discover the high-octane team Premier Graham had brought with
him. To a man, they were elite behemoths
of New Brunswick industry. Attending
were the CEO of New Brunswick Power, the head of Fraser Paper, and top
executives from McCain’s Frozen Foods, JD Irving Ltd. and banking and mining
interests. Power-dressed in Italian suits, starched white shirts and ties,
they might just as well have been all on their way to a Canadian trade mission
in Hong Kong.
Unrattled, our unpretentious
Maine delegation offered our modest company thumbnails and perspectives on
common challenges confronting our two similar and abutting rural colonies. In their initial presentations, the Canadians portrayed charm and were
brimming over with confidence. Discussions
soon ensued.
Soaring Organic
When it was my turn
to talk, I offered an off-the-cuff rosy review of the recent rocket-like growth occurring
in the Organic sector. Increasingly, consumers were thinking things through and
concluding that the good life was an interwoven blend of good health, good
pursuits and good eating. Since
Organic dairy farming was then flying high I choose to build my narrative
around Organic milk and the hard-working organic family dairy farmers who then produced
it. I made note that Organic milk had
been identified as the primary entry point for new Organic eaters. So it stood to reason that continued robust
Organic milk sales were a leading trend indicator of continued Organic industry
growth.
Soon after offering my Organic ditty the Summit broke for dinner. That’s when the NB Power CEO in his
three-piece suit walked briskly over to me.
When within earshot, the first words out of his mouth were, “Why is the only Organic milk I can find always
ultra-pasteurized?” At first I
offered an offhand reply. I remarked on
the spread out geographic nature of the USA and its similarly sprawling Organic
milk production and consumption, intertwined with the few-in-number concentration
of dairy processors. In combination,
these factors became inevitable economic pressure for concocting a distribution business
model that would as much as possible free Organic milk from constraints common to
this unique class of highly perishable foods.
Headhunted By New Brunswick
Reassured that I
knew something about what I was talking about, Mr. NB Power CEO soon loosened up and related his
story. Not long before he had been headhunted in Toronto where he and his wife had become committed, gung-ho Organic whole-food aficionados. He had been successfully recruited to run NB
Power. So, he moved wife, kids, whole kit
and caboodle to a new home in the Canadian Maritimes. His milk inquiry had been genuine. In the sophisticated and geographically-dense
Toronto marketplace they had enjoyed the European-like availability of all
things Organic, including raw and regular-pasteurized Organic milk. However, in sparsely-populated New Brunswick,
Organic offerings were limited and his family could find nothing beyond
semi-shelf-stable ultra-pasteurized Organic milk.
I related that
in Maine for years there had been similar interest expressed for fresh Organic
milk. Maine’s relatively compact size
and good distribution of Organic milk production – at the time 20% of all dairy
farmers in the State of Maine were Organic – made the fresh Organic milk
alternative a promising possibility. In time, fledgling fresh Organic milk
distribution attempts would be made in Maine. It seemed conceivable that given the right combination
of entrepaneurial Organic dairy farmers in proximity to Provincial-capitol
Fredericton, and its long established and thriving year-round Boyce Farmers
Market, that there was no good reason why fresh Organic milk could not one day become
a reality.
My CEO encounter at
the business Summit once again provided
a good reminder that you can’t tell a book by its cover.
Jim.
