Industry pioneer
AKVA’s Dougie Johnson
Dougie Johnson is best known these days as the man from AKVA, equipment supplier, professional networker and all round aquaculture expert, connected to every corner of the industry. But he still calls himself a salmon farmer, which is where it all started, almost 40 years ago. In fact, it was trout that first got him hooked, when back home on Jura after university he heard about a small farming project.
The local whisky distillery had the idea of using warm water from its condensers to start a trout farm and Dougie, who knew he wanted to work outside, was fascinated.
That was in 1976, when Lochailort was already up and running and the then Highlands and Islands Development Board had just launched its inaugural aquaculture course. He, along with a couple of others, was the board’s guinea pig student but he says he probably learnt more on the job, setting up the trout farm and a salmon hatchery.
‘The course provided an opportunity to work in different farms but a lot of what you learnt was from the experience of other people and from your own mistakes and sharing information.
‘In the early days it was great, everyone was experimenting. You could pick up the phone and say ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here’ and they’d say ‘oh yes we had that problem. Try this’. We were genuinely in it together.’
He went to work at Kames then to Norway, drawing on contacts to get a job and absorb what he could ‘because they were further down the road than we were’. He worked in a hatchery and salmon farm and when he returned to Scotland, in 1984, it was to Landcatch, which at the time owned the state of the art salmon hatchery.
Dougie, like many fish farmers of his generation, talks about how lucky he was to have been there at the start and grown with the industry. As Landcatch expanded into offshore cages, he focused on the broodstock and groundbreaking breeding programmes, and then he went with the company to Chile.
He didn’t make a conscious decision to change direction but when Landcatch started selling eggs to the Chileans he found himself
on the development side of the company for the first time.
‘It’s a combination of things, before you recognise what your interests are and what your strengths are. The stuff we were doing, particularly on the breeding side, was new and exciting. But I was also interested in going to Chile and setting up the business there.’
From 1990 to 2001 he became a frequent visitor to the country, spending weeks at a time helping to kickstart the salmon farming sector. From selling eggs to the Chilean market, Landcatch got involved in joint ventures with Chilean producers.
‘It was a tremendous opportunity because Chile is a great country, the people are lovely – and all sorts of other Scots were out there too!
‘Most of the Chilean industry was run by Chileans, though the Scots helped them set up their farms.’
He admits he is disappointed by the downturn in the industry in Chile in recent years.
-
‘The downside is that if it’s not controlled then it can turn bad very quickly. With farming, when you hit a problem it crashes. That’s happened everywhere, in Norway and Scotland. But we’re much better now at seeing what the risks are.’
Joining AKVA brought to an end Dougie’s commuting to South America but the Norwegian owned company has broadened his horizons in other ways.
‘I thought it was time for a change. I’d been through the whole production cycle and felt there were interesting opportunities to get involved in the other side of the business, though I found it quite strange to begin with and missed the production side.
‘I’m not an engineer, I went straight into selling. I was better at knowing the benefits of a piece of equipment, what it could do for
“We’ve built up an engineering support structure which we weren’t able to do in the early days”
“We are being slowly strangled by an increasing burden of bureaucratic red tape”
believes, and planning departments, who start off on the wrong foot. He mentions an application on Skye unanimously rejected by local councillors, partly because of concerns over the impact on tourism.
‘Where’s that coming from? They start from a position of negativity about what we do. We are being slowly strangled by an increasing burden of unrealistic planning and bureaucratic red tape. Unless this is addressed by government then I fear the Scottish industry will at best continue to stagnate.’
Dougie does sense there is more of an acceptance of the industry among the public, though, despite often bad press.
‘We’re used to seeing sensationalist headings about everything and people are sceptical about that now. I don’t have the same conversations I used to have at dinner parties where you were accused of all sorts of things. In the last five to ten years attitudes have changed here. People are fine about salmon farming generally.’
He is bemused by the vehemence of the anti-salmon lobby and tells a story about a flight to Canada a few years ago, when the wellheeled and, until then, friendly couple seated next to him asked what he did for a living.
‘I tried to explain but they didn’t want to even talk about it, it killed the conversation completely,’ said Dougie.
What would he have said in his industry’s defence?
‘I believe that what we do is an efficient way of producing food in a country that has huge natural resources to enable us to do that. We understand the implications of what we do and we care about the environment.
‘In the sixties and seventies, when farming started, wild salmon numbers were in decline as well as the sea trout, and we saw this as a way forward.
‘We might have been a bit naïve but that’s what we were thinking then, that it was a good thing we were doing.’
He said he is proud to have been involved in a sustainable industry that has created so many rewarding jobs and value for Scotland, and hopes to continue with AKVA for the foreseeable future.
‘There is huge growth potential utilising new technology and farming practices. I see opportunities even, eventually, in retirement. It’s a journey we’re on and I’ve been very fortunate to be part of it.’
“In Norway there’s a that salmon farming is a good industry to be in”