 Hi, I'm Tom Handel and we're here today with another member highlight on CTN. We're featuring Coastal Enterprises and I have here with me Daniel Wallace, who is the Program Director for the Healthy Food Finance Initiative and Hugh Copperthwaite, who is the Fisheries Project Director. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Professor CEI is involved with a grant now that also collaborates with the Wholesome Wave, which is a non-profit out of Connecticut, about food distribution. Could one of you describe what that project's about? Sure. We're, CEI is working on a two-year project with Wholesome Wave to look at healthy foods and specifically, Maine-related seafoods and how we can better integrate Maine seafood into the food system. So in the first year of this project, it's really a study looking at Maine's infrastructure and how seafood is landed, how it makes its way through the chain, and ultimately to the consumer. And our sense is that some fisheries are pretty well established in their routes of travel and others are a bit more piecemeal. So looking at this in the first year, just trying to get a solid understanding of how that food system works. And the second year is how can we then integrate Maine seafood into these food hub networks within the greater northeast region? So getting Maine seafood to food hubs and reaching plates beyond Maine. Now what exactly is a food hub? I mean, for an average person who may not understand how food is distributed, what does that involve? A food hub is actually a relatively new term and has really become an umbrella term to capture a number of businesses that essentially aggregate, perhaps lightly process and distribute food from local sources. So it's often small farms looking to aggregate their products so that they can reach into larger markets. It could be a wholesale market like a grocery store. Food hubs also can exist online as ordering systems. Again, there are a number of different forms that they can take, but the purpose of the food hub is as a critical piece of infrastructure in distributing locally produced food to consumers. So historically has there been a problem with Maine fisheries or fishermen getting their product out to the northeast to potential markets? I mean, we have a tremendous lobster resource in the state and in the last few years we've had some challenges with the industry with fuel prices, record landings, the economy not helping out. In the summer when we have these mass landings coming in, we need to move that product and a lot of it ends up in Canada to be processed and then sent back through Maine. And that just really doesn't make much sense. So lobster is one of those resources, but we're also interested in the other resources. So the scallops, the shrimp, limited urchin, fishery, other ground fish, where is it landed and where does it ultimately end up? So in the process of doing this study, who will you be talking to, what kinds of businesses or retailers or information? Initially in the first year we'll be talking with Maine-based businesses. So the dealers, the trucking companies, the wholesale seafood handlers, not so much the fishermen, but more of the infrastructure once the product is landed to help us get a solid feel for how that seafood moves around. And then in the second year we'll actually be talking with food hub managers in the greater northeast region to see, do they have seafood now coming into their system? And if so, or if not for that, why don't they? Do they need to make changes to their facility? Do they need ice or freezing capacity? What would the ideal format be for the seafood product coming in so that they could handle it and then redistribute? The project, this particular project is an evolution of a relationship we already have with Wholesome Wave through something called the Healthy Food Finance Initiative, which has a regional scope to it. The point of that particular project is to increase sales of healthy foods in retail outlets, particularly low income communities. So this is a nice way to build on that project and begin to incorporate seafood into the conversation where previously it's mostly been focused on land-based agriculture and agricultural products. It sounds like something that would be really beneficial to Maine. If anybody that's listening to this sounds like they're really interested in knowing more about the project, where would they get the information, how would they contact? Well they can speak to me, Daniel Wallace, at 207-535-2916. Yeah, we both work in CEI's Portland office, so we're at the same phone number, or you can go to CEI's website, ceimean.org, and find our contact information there as well. Great, well thank you very much for joining us, it's very interesting, good luck with the project. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.