Robert Paterson's Weblog

Entrepreneurs & Startups on PEI? - What won't work and what might?

We on PEI need to have thousands of new young immigrants living here in the next 10 years. So what will pull them here?

There are few jobs. 65% of GDP is government and even that is shrinking. They will only come here if there is a vibrant StartUp economy that is based on Entrepreneurs.

So what do those terms StartUp and Entrepreneur mean for PEI? 

When I heard the word "entrepreneur" or "startup", I used to think of Hi Tech Pioneers. But this never made sense for PEI. For if you want to do that, it is best if you are connected to the Tech Village in the Valley.  We are not close enough to where the real action is in Tech for a Facebook to emerge here.

I also used to think that every Entrepreneur worth her salt would want to grow the business to be very large. Then I thought of who has done this in Atlantic Canada. Sobeys, McCains and Irving. Not exactly a huge field and so not a useful ambition. We are not close enough to the financial centre. And if you make something we are too far away from the markets.

But all of our development is based on these assumptions. So what then will work?

An immigration/development strategy based on supporting the small artisan networking their way to dominance locally and then globally. 

Sounds mad? Well here are the underpinning trends that will make this work - for it is working now on a small scale.

• A New Market Based on Trust that can only be satisfied by the small in a network. More and more people do not trust the products and services of the Big. What is in my food? What is in my shampoo? What is in my drug? Why does my washing machine fail after 2 years? Why can I never get service? What is on my toy ... The response to this is a movement towards what can be trusted. Meat raised in small herds where animals live the life they were designed to live by people we know and meet in the street. Soap made by people we know who use real ingredients in small batches. Tech service people who we know. Toys made in a person's home. Clothes made by someone you know.

• The Network Provides Scale and Ease of Access These artisans have always existed and have eked out a marginal living. But the new web based network is changing the game. Now we can buy direct and it is easy. Many pasture meat producers in a network = a lot of meat. Many small soap makers in a network = a lot of soap. Small and artisan no longer condemns you to the sidelines. 

• This model has access to the Network Effect and so offers better margins and financing than the traditional. As we have seen for Raymond Loo, Patrick Ledwell and Tim Chaisson, now the community of your customers will finance you. CSA is becoming how the new artisanal farmer gets her working capital. Community Equity, as with Justus Coffee, is how larger sums can be raised from your customers! Customers who now work for you. Customers who market for you and who sell for you.  The network effect also works at the scale of the node. Jen and Derek plant a wide range of plants and sell a basket, so if the tomatoes fail, as they did last year, they are OK. On a pasture farm, the cows help the pigs who help the chickens and vice versa.

This market for Trust is small in total but huge for PEI. It can only be accessed by the small. The large corporates will be shut out of it. It is growing as people wake up and see the risks that they take in buying mass market goods and services. These customers want their suppliers to succeed and will suport them in all sorts of ways. It's a common movement.

Talented people are also waking up to the fact that they cannot trust their future to a job in the old system and in the big cities. We are seeing a trickle now of talented people leaving the old life and coming to Atlantic Canada where they can make a living and where the key cost of a home is in reach.

Just as many Atlantic Canadians go west in search of a well paying job, life is very precarious in the big cities now. A one bedroom condo is about $350,000 in Toronto and more in Vancouver. The young are underemployed and locked out. Or if a couple both have jobs and a home, the loss of one job renders them homeless. The Toronto couple will not come here to get a well paying job, they want to come here and make a decent living. They want to make things themselves and not work for wages.

They want to make things and make a living doing something that is truly them. This is what the new networked artisanal economy offers both sides. This is why customers invest in their suppliers. All want meaning and to be part of getting independence from the corporate grip.

These are people who will set up deep roots here on PEI and like the Back to the Landers make a contribution. They are not here to get a passport but to have  a life and to make a living.

So how to support this?

Stop the vain focus on the big - they will never come and they will never grow here. They never have so why think they will now. But a focus on big misses the real opportunity to network the small into a big network.

Stop the vain focus on Jobs. A smart new company will not employ a lot of people full time. It may never offer a "Job" but it will offer work.  Jobs are not the thing - paid work is the thing. Only a fool will fix their overhead. Most organizations will be family based. If they want marketing, they will reach into the network and find a trusted supplier. If they want book keeping, they will do the same. 

Stop the focus on Hi Tech. The real new artisans use a lot of high tech, but they use it to make things not as an end in themselves. The film makers at the Film Factory use it to make big films. The Great Canadian Soap Company use it to sell their products.

Instead help support the networks - support groups that get together - help them make it easy for people to buy local food and anything. Make it easy for people from away to buy artisanal good and services from us. 

Instead help families who want to do this come here. Reach out to them. 

In the Week of May 7, my pals from Start Up Canada will be here to help us get behind this and to help connect us to the Canadian and the Global Network. At the Queen St Commons on May 7 we will have a get together to talk about how all the artisanal sectors can help each other.

Our ambition to help PEI become as self sufficient and resilient as it was in 1900. Where 80% of what we need is supplied locally.

 

Why there are Cuts on PEI - And what to do about them

I confess to being totally frustrated now. In the legislature and in the formal media, we are all making a fuss about this cut or that one. But no one - and that includes the government has put the real context on the public table.

These 2 pie charts show why there have to be cuts. 

Back in 1995 when I came to PEI, Health Care costs were 35% of the PEI tax vase. That is all PEI taxes before the Feds. Soon they will be 75% and if we don't stop the rate of growth, they will exceed the total taxes for the province. Soon being in the next 5 years. I may be a year or two out but no more.

This is why there have to be cuts. We cannot borrow more. The Feds are pulling back. This ONE issue is the key. No amount of fooling around in any other sector will change anything. We stop the rise in health costs or we all go bust. Period.

I ask for a time out in all the bickering over small things. Time to get real and deal with the real problem.

Oh and whose fault is this?

It's yours and mine. We have told politicians for decades that what we want is more spending on health care. WE drove this to the brink where we are today.

My readers and the minister know very well where to look for the answers. They are to be found NOT in the Health care system but in what we all eat every day. The Industrial Food System and its grip  on us is the cause of the epidemic of chronic disease.

The debate we need to have is how to get out from its grip - not whether we are being mean to rural PEI by cutting the Community Fund. And Governmernt - please have some courage and take the problem to the people. 

Quality and Small are one and the same and empower you to make a living - Ham!

In this short film is the essence of what I think is the real "new economy"

Ham made like this is an entirely different product to mass ham. It can only be made like this and so in a small operation that does not expand. The market for this kind of quality is not a mass market but it is large, global and is growing.

A place like PEI is ideal. For it is not only meat but all Products and Services. We cannot do the mass market here. So why not join the artisanal quality market? More on Allan Benton here.

If I have intrigued you - here is a longer film - he is quite a man

An agenda for older folks like me - and you?

My pal Richard Best sent me this today - sounds like a plan!

"Robert, as we retire from the “normal” work word, and by our wits learn the new skills of the young seniors, our interests turn to getting our health back, through better nutrition, much less stress, healthy physical activity and some degree of spiritual maturation.

I propose that all of these are available to us in one package, and that is in becoming ‘micro-farmer/monks and nuns’

When we take our yards and turn them into intensive food production units with the tutelage of the likes of Will Allen:

1.       We produce high quality organic foods; more than we need and hopefully enough to help supply our neighbours with higher quality choices. Community is thus built.

2.       Our needs are less; we have unwound from the careers; we get our hands in the dirt and live direct to our lives instead of the indirect way in which most everything was equated to and translated through dollars.

3.       Our exercises are Paleolithic. We chop/split/drag/lift/climb/drag (ever mindful of core engagement and good back posture) our way to more muscle, the engine that burns fat. We trade in so much seated car time for walking, and even more fat says goodbye.

4.       There are only a few paths to spiritual enlightenment; direct revelation, study/meditation and Nature. Through Nature, via gardening, we are blessed with little hunches and great calmness imparted by Nature Intelligence, The Holy Spirit, the Tao, or whatever on may feel a need to call it."

 

Austerity is Driving a new version of Back to the Land in Portugal - soon us?

High house prices and a precarious job market make it tough for young couples in Canada. There may be an alternative. For half the price of a one bedroom condo in Toronto, you could have a house + 50 acres in rural PEI and join the new local food sell direct market. That would be a big operation in the new context.

I have several friends with less than 10 acres, one with 2, who are able to make a living here. 

This is not the back to the land escape of the 1970's. This is getting in on the edge of the real new farming revolution where people grow real food on small units and sell direct to people who know that Big Food is harming them.

In parts of Europe the flood to the cities is reversing. Governments are starting to help this return to the land. On PEI we need 10,000 young new families. This is one of the ways we can get them. Here is what is going on in Portugal:

Jose Diogo, who spent two years in Lisbon working as a technical advisor at a meat company, was one who fled at the beginning of Portugal's debt crisis in 2009, and has no regrets.

"I lived in Lisbon and decided to go back home to the interior to grab the opportunity of exploring the land my father owned," Mr Diogo said on the porch at his stone farm house, looking out over apple orchards and grazing fields for his 30 cows.

Far from discouraging people like Mr Diogo, the government is trying to get others to follow in his footsteps.

In February it launched an initiative to map the country's unused land and terrain that does not have a known owner, with the aim of making it available to be rented to those who want to work it.

The government has also approved a land exchange scheme by which private owners of unused land will win tax benefits if they make their properties available to be rented by farmers.

Around 1.5 million hectares are expected to be made available through the scheme.

"In tough times, this is a way for people to generate some income, both those who put the land out for rental and those who exploit it," said Agriculture Minister Assuncao Cristas.

 

Nobody Expects the Comfy Chair to Kill us - But it does

I always thought that this was a joke but as you will see in the next video where I talk with Professor Michael Rose, the comfy chair is a killer.

 

And now the science for why the chair is a killer. 

 

Sitting a lot is killing you - 40% more chance of dying of CHD if you sit a lot

" people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. This was after adjusting for factors such as age, weight, physical activity and general health status, all of which affect the death risk. It also found a clear dose-response effect: the more people sat, the higher their risk of death" (link)

How can you sit less? I sit less by standing at work. It cost me nothing to make this change other than sore legs for about 2 months. Now after a year, I find sitting uncomfortable.

This is my home made Standing Desk - not much of a photographer but you can see what it is.

I have been standing at work now for nearly a year. I started this because I became aware that THE "Take More Exercise" advice, while good, misses the larger point. We are very inactive. It's not just that most of us don't work with our bodies anymore, it is that we sit all day.

Add up the hours. Your commute - sitting in the car - say an hour or two. A full day at work or at School - 8 hours. Then 4 hours in front of the TV of computer. Then bed for 6 - 8 hours. 14 hours on our bum all day. Your one hour workout twice a week is not going to be much help.

Think about this and how you can help yourself and your kids.

Here is the latest on the research:

It is now well accepted that too much sitting is unhealthy. Studies in the last few years have found that death risks rise when people watch spend more leisure time in front of a computer screen or TV or simply sit too much.

The current study took a more direct approach, looking at the relationship of total daily sitting time to the likelihood of dying within the next three years, seeking to put a number on just how harmful prolonged sitting is.

Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. This was after adjusting for factors such as age, weight, physical activity and general health status, all of which affect the death risk. It also found a clear dose-response effect: the more people sat, the higher their risk of death.

The results are part of the Sax Institute's 45 and Up Study, the largest ongoing study of healthy aging in the Southern Hemisphere. It compared the self-reported daily sitting time of 222,497 Australian adults 45 years or older with their likelihood of death in the next three years.

Healthy or sick, active or inactive, the more people sat, the more likely they were to die in the next three years. Physical activity did reduce this risk significantly: the 40% higher death risk found when comparing people who sat the most to those who sat the least increased to 100% when comparing those who sat the most and exercised the least to those who sat the least and exercised the most. But while the death risk was much lower for anyone who exercised five hours a week or more, it still rose as these active people sat longer.

In other words, people still need to exercise, but it's also important to spend less time sitting.

 

Health Myths - Animal Fat is Bad - Vegetable Fat is Good

We have been programmed. For 30 years we have been told that we need to eat more healthy grains and to eat vegetable fats rather than animal fats. And the result? The epidemic of chronic disease and obesity has exploded. All this has taken place in 30 years - demanding that we look for a cause - something new in our diet.

The smoking gun is the Food Guide. The epidemic took off starting in 1987. At current rates, 100% of Americans will be obese by 2048!

At the heart of the new advice in 1987 was to eat less animal fat and more "healthy" grains. Inside this was the belief that margarine and vegetable oils were better for us too. Neither of which had ever been eaten by humans before and all of which required massive processing.

Here is the skinny on vegetable oils from Wellness Mama:

As an interesting correlation, check out the rates of heart disease and cancer since then. As this article notes:

All one has to do is look at the statistics to know that it isn’t true. Butter consumption at the turn of the century was eighteen pounds per person per year, and the use of vegetable oils almost nonexistent. Yet cancer and heart disease were rare. Today butter consumption hovers just above four pounds per person per year while vegetable oil consumption has soared–and cancer and heart disease are endemic.

Since the 1950′s these vegetable oils and their derivatives have been increasingly used in processed foods and for frying or cooking. They are marketed as healthy because they contain monounsaturated fats and some level of Omega 3 fatty acids.

What’s Wrong with Vegetable Oils?

There are many problems with vegetable oil consumption, and in my opinion, no amount is safe. To understand why, let’s look at a few of the biggest problems with vegetable oils:

Our Bodies Aren’t Meant to Consume Them!

The human body is about 97% saturated and monounsaturated fat, with only 3 % Polyunsaturated fats. Half of that three percent is Omega-3 fats, and that balance needs to be there. Vegetable oils contain very high levels of polyunsaturated fats, and these oils have replaced many of the saturated fats in our diets since the 1950s.

The body needs fats for rebuilding cells and hormone production, but it has to use the building blocks we give it. When we give it a high concentration of polyunsaturated fats instead of the ratios it needs, it has no choice but to incorporate these fats into our cells during cell repair and creation.

The problem is that polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable and oxidize easily in the body (if they haven’t already oxidized during processing or by light exposure while sitting on the grocery store shelf). These oxidized fats cause inflammation and mutation in cells.

In arterial cells, these mutations cause inflammation that can clog arteries. When these fats are incorporated into skin cells, their mutation causes skin cancer. (This is why people often get the most dangerous forms of skin cancer in places where they are never exposed to the sun, but that is a topic for another day!)

When these oils are incorporated into cells in reproductive tissue, some evidence suggests that this can spur problems like endometriosis and PCOS. In short, the body is made up of saturated and monounsaturated fats, and it needs these for optimal health.

 

Rory Beck - What his loss means to me

I have been very upset this week after hearing of Rory's death. We knew each other but were not close. I feel so strongly because his death reminded me of my own father's death. My own dad died suddenly at home aged 55. I believe that Rory was 54. I was stunned by my father's untimely death and Rory's death has brought all those feelings back for me. Grief and also loss of what might have been,

I extend my heartfelt sympathy to his wife and children. I can only assure you that your dad will live on in your dreams and in you and your own lives. There is hardly a day when I don't ask his advice and get an answer. One way or another he guides me still.

One of the lessons that I have taken away though is that I am determined not to do things that I know will put me at risk of following his example. His life and then death is the motivation that I have to find a better way of looking after my own health.

I want to talk more now about loss of what might have been and the lessons of an early death that we all can share.

I also remember the shock that his death created at his workplace. Some who were very close to him were also very angry. They felt that my father had in a way cheated them by not taking care of himself. They missed him as much as we the family did.

I get a sense of this too circling around Rory. We enter perilous times. Not having him at the centre is a massive loss. Not just for his colleagues but for all Islanders. I say this with no party affiliation. We face such dangerous times that not having him threatens us all.

For as we all see from this budget on, the time bomb that is created by our demography and our systemic poor health on PEI puts us on track for bankruptcy. In 7- 10 years, our health care costs will be nearly double our PEI tax base. This is not just because we are older, it is because most Islanders will have at least one chronic illness. It is also that we don't have enough young. Who will pay the taxes when most of us will be 65 and not have a pension?

The challenge of dealing with this is of the same magnitude as England in 1940 facing Germany alone and with nothing. The end of a society is on the cards. 

This has got nothing to do with this party or that party. It has to do with all the assumptions that we have all agreed to for how things work. 

Can we be confident that the Feds will come to our rescue?

Will big business come to PEI and open up plants and give us all jobs?

Can we tackle the healthcare costs simply by using cuts?

Will oil prices go down?

Will our kids stay here and pay all the taxes?

Will retired public servants keep their pensions while others starve to pay the taxes so that they can?

Will immigrants flood to PEI based on current conditions?

Will working for hours still be viable for many?

Will farming as we know it no longer damage PEI?

Does healthcare make us well?

Is school preparing our kids for the world that is here and in the future?

Do we not all believe that these are correct? Until now the feds have come to the rescue but this is not the trend is it? They are cutting deeply here on PEI. If oil hurts now what will it be like when it is $3 a litre? Do you really think that your $50K a year pension is safe when I and others have nothing? When the healthcare budget is $1.2 billion, what will be cut to continue to pay for your knee surgery? Look at our kids today. How many of them can stand on their own two feet?

And all of this is converging in a 5- 10 year period. There is no time left.

So what to do? We cannot give all of this to government. It's our challenge. We have to talk with each other and face the facts. Then government can act.

We have done this before.

Back in the 1830's Islanders were in the thrall of the absentee landlords. They could see that they had no future as a tenant or serf society. So they got together and threw the landlords out. The golden age of PEI followed. 15,000 independent farms and a complete economy that functioned around them.

We can do this again. It is our only chance. But we have to start by looking at the mess we are all in and stop pointing fingers. Our job is to grow up and become pioneers again like our great grand parents.

It would have been good to have been able to talk more with Rory about these things. For as we the citizens talk, we have to have open minds in government too. 

The Impact of a Big Local Market

Here is what is happening in Halifax - and here....? Can you see it? (Globe and Mail)

If we want lots of new jobs and a healthier local economy and more young settling here - then we need to boost the local market for local food. We need to make buying it as easy as going to the supermarket. This kind of development really works.

Farmers’ markets attract city dwellers the way clover fields draw bees. Every major Canadian city has at least one, and since colonial days they have been a favourite tool of city planners seeking to develop new communities or rejuvenate rundown parts of town.

Though farmers’ markets traditionally have not been money-making commercial real estate ventures, a spate of new permanent structures suggests they have a new role as a popular anchor for urban redevelopment to lure both tourists and residents as the buy-local food movement gathers momentum across North America.

And here is how it is playing out in Halifax. I can think of a site - can you?

The Halifax Port Authority Development initiated the $13-million Seaport market, in part, to serve its growing cruise ship business. Almost a quarter of a million cruise passengers arrived in the harbour last year and one of the first things they saw from the towering multi-storey ships was Seaport’s landscaped roof, Mr. Tufts said.

“My favourite part of the building is the green roof,” he said. “The view from it is spectacular. And even though it’s more expensive to put a deck over a roof, it protects the structure. Normally a roof has to be replaced every 15 to 20 years, but with the green roof protecting it, this one should last twice as long.”

It is an important attraction and is also rented for weddings and other functions.

The ambitious market development was designed to meet and exceed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum standards and features state-of-the-art sustainability treatments such as wind-turbine-powered outdoor lighting, a combined geothermal-solar energy system, grey water recycling and interior ceilings and other furnishings made from wood recovered after Hurricane Juan toppled trees in 2003.

“I love walking through the market and hearing people talk about ‘Juan wood,’ “ said Mr. Tufts, who arranged to use the wood after a local company salvaged Halifax’s hurricane-felled trees. His firm, Lydon Lynch Architects, now has its office on the market’s second floor.

“The great thing is that the farmers were 100 per cent behind sustainability because that’s the world they live in,” he said. “Out on their farms they waste nothing. Everything is valuable. They’re dealing with a finite amount of resources and they understand the value of being in a green building that’s energy-responsible.”

The building is on the site of an old warehouse and is down the street and around the corner from the city’s historic market located in an old stone brewery near downtown Halifax, which continues to operate on Saturdays. Seaport, which is open six days a week year round, was built as the centrepiece of a port lands rejuvenation project.