104 Building a Partnership with a Community Supported Fishery in your CSA

April 21, 2021 by Corinna

In February, 2021, I got an email from an Alaskan fisherman named Aaron Sechler at Citizen Salmon Alaska. He wanted to talk to me about partnering up with our CSA to sell his wild-caught fish to my CSA members. Although I was intrigued at the idea, I initially dismissed it because in my mind, he wasn’t “local enough.” A few days later, I decided to send an email to my CSA members to throw the idea out to them. “Maybe I was wrong…” I thought. “What if my customers WOULD like this opportunity to access fresh, wild-caught seafood?”

I have never received so many responses to an email in my life. I had 2 people tell me, “This isn’t local.” Everyone else said, “YES! YES! YES! Please call the fisherman back, and explore this idea! I would buy it!”

So I decided I’d set up a Zoom call with Aaron, and discuss the possibility of creating a partnership with his CSF. We would “adopt” or promote his products and online store, and he would benefit from gaining access to my customer base (and make my customers happy). In this week’s podcast, I decided to share this recorded Zoom call with you. If you’ve never thought of adding a “wild-caught” fish share to your product suite, this may help you think through some of the questions and issues involved. You get to be a fly on the wall, as I explore this option with Citizen Salmon Alaska!

You’ll hear me ask about fishing practices, packaging, shipping, customer service, and promotion — as I try to imagine if this would work for our CSA.  I also talk through some of my objections (and my customer’s questions!), to help him see what he’s up against!

In the end, we decided to say yes to Aaron! And we are trialing our first year’s partnership with Citizen Salmon Alaska! I’ll report back at the end of 2021, in another podcast episode, to share how it went, what we learned, and what we’ll do differently next time.

If you’d like to add a CSF to your CSA, Aaron from Citizen Salmon is looking for more farms to partner with. You can find his contact information below.

Meet My Podcast Guest: Who is Aaron Sechler?

Aaron Sechler is a former Minnesota bartender, who moved to Homer, Alaska, started a house-painting business, and then became a professional small-boat fisherman! A few years ago, he founded Citizen Salmon Alaska — a Community Supported Fishery (CSF) dedicated to helping protect Alaska’s seafood populations by responsibly harvesting wild Alaska seafood using a local fleet of small boat fishermen.  A well-connected activist for local fishing waters, Aaron is passionate about building up his local community and introducing his customers to the story behind his craft.

Hit play and let’s get started!

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Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

• • • Find my Facebook group for farmers! I jump in here every month to teach farmers tips and fundamentals of marketing.
    • Join my 7-Day Lead Magnet Challenge here. This challenge will be delivered over the course of 7 days via email and video tutorials. The goal is to help you select, build and connect your first lead magnet so you can start collecting email leads!
    • Learn more about Citizen Salmon Alaska here.
    • Want to explore working with Aaron Sechler to partner your CSA with his CSF? Reach out via email at citizensalmon1@gmail.com
    • Aaron mentions this book in the podcast, as a great place to start in learning about sustainably caught wild fish. The book is called Four Fish by Paul Greenberg.

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My hope is to feature guests periodically on the show. If you know someone who is innovating in the area of marketing as a farmer, please send me an email at corinna@mydigitalfarmer.com.

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