SmartFish
Mexico’s SmartFish is on a mission to celebrate and support good fishing management practices and sustainability, for the betterment of the country’s seafood communities and marine ecosystems.
When fishermen can earn more fishing less, the cycle of poverty and overexploitation can be broken – a philosophy that is integral to SmartFish’s core values. The firm works to commercialize seafood products in Mexico that have a sustainability guarantee, negotiating with cooperatives in an open-book style to show transparent profits at every link on the seafood supply chain.
SmartFish is considered the only marketer in Mexico that exclusively sells seafood of sustainable origin, its website states. The business embraces a triple impact business model focused on environment, social, and economic components altogether. The model allows for SmartFish to generate new jobs in communities, which are mainly occupied by women, as well as conduct training programs and pay better for fish and processing.
“Over time, we have expanded the scope and diversity of products we offer. In SmartFish stores, you can find a wide variety of food products that are environmentally responsible and that seek to generate a triple impact, environmental, social, and economic in the communities where they come from,” according to SmartFish.
The B-Corp-certified company, which is the first of its kind in Latin America trading solely in certified-sustainable fish and shellfish, talked to SeafoodSource about the main factors influencing its sustainability and conservations aims, as well as the small-scale fishing communities inspiring its work:
SeafoodSource: What kind of trends have informed SmartFish’s latest sustainability/conservation efforts?
SmartFish: The SmartFish seafood company was founded to offer consumers the option to buy sustainably produced seafood from small-scale Mexican fishers and to provide small-scale fishers who adopt or maintain environmentally sustainable and socially responsible practices a trading partner to reach better-paying markets. We have found robust and growing demand for sustainable and traceable seafood in Mexico.
SeafoodSource: What key features serve to set SmartFish’s sustainable seafood offerings apart in the market?
SmartFish: SmartFish is currently the only vendor in Mexico that trades exclusively in seafood that is third-party verified as sustainable or improving (Marine Stewardship Council certified, Fair Trade certified, “Yellow” or “Green” rated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, or in a fishery improvement project reporting on FisheryProgress.org). Our sourcing policies require both environmental sustainability and social responsibility on the part of our suppliers and can be consulted on our website: Smartfish.mx
SeafoodSource: How does sustainability factor into your overall mission and strategy as a business?
SmartFish: Sustainability, social responsibility, and traceability, as well as transparency with our suppliers and consumers are at the core of our business. SmartFish is the first B-Corp certified seafood company in Latin America that trades exclusively with third-party verified sustainable seafood. We practice an open-book negotiation policy with our fisher cooperatives partners so that all parties can see the costs and profit margins of each step of the supply chain. By shortening the supply chain and processing their products, the cooperatives retain 50 percent of the price paid by the final buyer.
SeafoodSource: How does SmartFish AC approach sustainable, responsible development?
SmartFish: For SmartFish, sustainable, responsible development cannot be separated from environmental sustainability. We work closely with our sister NGO to catalyze the capacities of small-scale fisher organizations to improve fisheries management, the quality of their organizations and their entrepreneurial capacities so that they can process and add value to their products and sell to companies like SmartFish and better-paying market segments.
