The first-of-its-kind Maine Aquaculture Financial Benchmarking Report was completed in the summer of 2020. The report, written by Dr. Carole Engle and Dr. Jonathan van Senten , in partnership with the Maine Aquaculture Association, is designed to be used by growers as a method to compare their performance to industry averages, and by lenders and financiers to assess investment in aquaculture businesses. The report includes benchmarks that were rated as the most important by growers and financiers such as production, expenses, breakeven prices and yields, profitability, loan repayment, and efficiency. Each benchmark quantifies industry medians, averages, and variance around the means.
The Maine Aquaculture Association (MAA) worked with Science Crunchers, a Portuguese firm that specializes in translating scientific data into visual and written content, to create two-pagers for each species included in the report (oysters, mussels, scallops, and seaweed). The two pagers, which use a combination of text, images, and infographics, condensed 172 pages worth of material into a handful of pages. The materials were designed to provide a user-friendly approach for all levels of prior aquaculture knowledge and highlight the report using visuals (such as mussels growing on ropes) and infographics (visually presenting findings) to span topics from a general sector overview to the granular economic details of each species. The team additionally created a two-pager on integrated multitrophic aquaculture.
MAA also wrote a white paper that overviews aquaculture risk management and mitigation in Maine, including a breakdown by categories of risk and available resources, along with a section explaining aquaculture crop insurance and the current options available. Science Crunchers partnered with MAA on this project as well to provide a two-pager on risk management, including insurance options, and a beginner's guide to risk management decision tree. Both products rely on graphics, visual groupings, and brief text to compartmentalize and facilitate the steps that can be taken on a farm to improve risk management and mitigation.
The presentation will use the two-pagers to highlight the findings from the benchmarking report and illustrate its science communication. It will then detail the risk management two-pager and beginner's guide to risk management decision tree, and show how a more text-driven report can be transformed for increased engagement.