YouSaid · the spoken record

John Bragg

lines on the record: 114
first: 2024-10-01
most recent: 2024-10-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And I'm not sure Buffett would agree. He buys going companies with existing revenues. I don't think he's done much startup. You know, he gave up on Berkshire, which was the right thing. But he's buying companies all over the world that are already cash flow positive and making money, and he can measure that. My business of food and cable and even inland were buying kind of startups and growing them. And maybe we were just lucky, but we've made that work. We could see that we could do that. So it's a little different than Buffett. Now that we have mature businesses, we'd like to find something that fits Buffett's model, find something that already has good cash and good management, and we're looking every day, and we almost closed on a significant one.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The land development we're doing up there is the same thing. We bought About three thousand acres of carrot land in the Annapolis Valley at premium prices, why would you pay premium? We need to secure the base. That's where we grow our carrots, and we were doubling the production of carrots, so we need the land base, in some cases paying twice what the market was, but it's only available once, you know, if you don't. Not always available.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's tremendous advantages to If you have good management and would like to think we have good management, we work hard at that, but there's just all kinds of decisions that we're making that Of course if its efficiency is in the factory we want to have a two or three year payback but the Sometimes you have to make motherhood statements, chefs say well $150 million factory in the Acadian Peninsula. That's a motherhood statement. I mean, you couldn't say, well, it's going to be a three-year payback. It's not going to be, but it's a good long-term asset to. For the area too good at long term asset for us, but so there are some what I call motherhood decisions you make to keep yourself efficient and”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yeah, absolutely, I'll be worse still doing all kinds of land development and this development we have in the food business on the peninsula it's all twenty year horizon type stuff to get the land cleared and developed. But it's unique, and nobody else's going to have it. So there's lots of Of projects like that.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think we paid too much, but we were prepared to pay at the top of the cycle. Again we were looking at the horizon if you paid a little too much in your private company. You just have to live a little longer to make it work. My brother used to say about buying a wood lot. Well, maybe we're paying too much, but if we live long enough it'll be a good deal. So this was the same with cable. It just meant that instead of ten year payback you took twelve and you work for nothing for two years. And the big scheme, that was the right thing to do.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While scale ended up being very important in that business, and that's why in 83, when we got Halifax and were able to tie, we couldn't really afford that professional engineers we were relying on suppliers to give us the technical advice, but skills absolutely important.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thought we should have a little family meeting on it. Look, we're losing it, and I'm cutting costs everywhere. We did cut costs, took all the extra people out. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm not really sure where we're going. I think we could sell to some of our neighbors, or maybe we could buy one or two, because they were everybody was struggling. My father said, we spent a lot of money on your education. We shouldn't throw it away. That's a pretty wise advice. And I said, geez, I don't know whether we'll ever get it back or not, but it turned out it was right. It had an expense of education, and we learned how to go on it. Sometimes you get a little wisdom, takes a long way.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I guess maybe it was eleven thousand these numbers grow or shrink over fifty years. I think it was eleven thousand a month we were losing.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We bought the company out of Newfoundland. Systems in Sudbury and in Bridge Columbia and Alberta. We just gradually bought them. But there's nothing to buy anymore. I think about this. We have both our cable and food business that were both quite rapid growth businesses. From really small kiteach industries to professional companies, we've played that game and they're both good businesses, but I don't see the next big step.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While it was a small town, and so it didn't take a lot of capital, but we borrowed the money from the Bank of Nova Scotia, or most of it, and we worked hard. It's amazing how it developed. But then we could see that you could tie them together with fiber, and we kept, and they kept more capital was required. So a lot of the other towns, the GIS, just decided they didn't want to put more capital in for sale. And by corporate lawyer at the time, George Kane said, John, there's something interesting here. All these towns come up. There's six buyers, but you always get them. And it was basically we became easy to deal with, and we always lived by our word, and we always paid top price. And so we just kept picking them off one to time and made it easy and didn't over. Overnegotiate, we gradually picked up a lot of towns. And then, you know,”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't going to mention that. It was so terrible. We built a tower down at Mount Shamcook on the U.S. border, and we received the Bangor channels there, appeared them, put them on the bus, and of course Halifax got them first. Time we got a Manavaris, they were two weeks old, but the sitcoms were okay, but the Boston Bruins two weeks later were not quite so good. There was not a lot of entertainment, so we were selling these US channels two weeks old. Then eventually we got a microwave system that brought them in directly still off Mount Shamcook. And now, of course, all this stuff comes by fiber. And so tremendous changes in that business.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We built a system and with Coax cable and put up a big master antenna to get the signals out of Halifax, and then we got microwave American channels in, but it was tough. It was really tough. I mean, again, we didn't know what we were doing.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a cable television license, and we didn't really buy it. The licenses were owned by the And so they accepted applications for different towns, and their philosophy at the time was to have local entrepreneurs do local television, but that got taken over by technology with fiber and where you could tie ten small systems together and have a good size one and add a lot more capital. And when we started, you know, we hit two American channels that we were offering. And I remember when we were upgrading Halifax from six channels to twelve, our engineer at the time said nobody will ever watch twelve channels. And that's all of my time. So we built 12 channels, and of course with a short time, that was outdated. We had to rebuild. So we didn't pay for the license. The license we applied for, and nobody else applied. And this is for Amish Nova Scotia.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're always looking for somebody else to have trouble. All you can do is farm through the cycles, keep putting the inputs in, do everything on time professionally, and hope you get the break. Our advantage is that we are in three different microclimates. Like I mentioned that we had a poor crop in the peninsula, but we had a very good crop in Maine. And so just a different microclimate. Most businesses, you can kind of project and do a business plan, but in the food business, weather plays a big part.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They normally catch good showers and have good rain. This year they didn't get any rain, and we had a tremendous crop. And you go to see it the day before at harvest and there are just little wee blueberries that hardly weigh anything. And as a result, we had less than half a crop. And so we did everything right, all the conditions were right. So very difficult to project, but But what you need as a farmer is somebody else to be in trouble with their crop and your crop work out well. But you're always looking, so what's the cottage industry and what's the crop in Lake St. John? What's the crop in Maine? What's the cultivated crop?”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food business is very difficult to put down on paper. You know, you're fighting the weather and all kinds of weather conditions, currencies a big issue, labor supply is because we're seasonal. Really in the food business, the blueberry business in particular, we just have to put all the inputs in, do it all at the right time, the exact day for the sprays, and then hope that Mother Nature gives you a break and doesn't take it away from you. Like, for instance, this year. We think the Acadian Peninsula has great potential for wild blueberries and that catches showers because it sticks out in the water and the bay shores on one side and Either the Maramichi Bay or whatever's in the other.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Historically more expensive, and we could get a premium, but it's becoming more difficult, so our objective is to be the low cost producer even against cultivated.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's tremendous difference. First of all, the health benefits, the antioxidants are double in wild blu-rays. The flavor is much better, the cultivated blueberries, they're a fine product, but if you have them side by each, Anybody will choose the wild for flavor, and that's a big help. We have like jam manufacturers, one of the biggest in the world is Andros in France, and they'll only use European blueberries, which are a different species again or our wild blueberries. And Europeans can't compete with us because they're still cod each industry. So they're gradually disappearing. But there are lots of people who will change the recipe and maybe use 50% cultivate it. So it's big competition.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We could sell 40 million pounds of blueberries, wild blueberries, kind of a specialty item. But when you want to sell three or four hundred million pounds, now you've got to compete with cultivated blueberries and with strawberries and marmalade, raspberries. We're always trying to be Be better and get our costs down.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd like to think that we're low cost, and hopefully we are, but we strive every day and we have a culture of every year trying to do it better. There's always chances we can make in the manufacturing line or on the farm, and so we have a real culture of Being opened to do it better tomorrow, I could list five or six things that I know we're going to do better next year and from some of the things we learned this year and improving the mechanical harvester, improving how we unload the product and how we deal with the farmers. There's always steps that you can do and you can't be satisfied with the status quo.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to be the low cost producer, and you have to be top quality and blu rays and carrots There are established grades and so on. So it's not battered onion's a little different because there was only one major competitor and we were trying to compete with that. By and large, you have to be a low-cost producer and have top quality. And top quality doesn't necessarily cost. In fact, quite often it's cheaper because you have less product on the floor and less shrinkage and you're doing it all right and the end product become better. Top quality, low cost is a pretty good motto.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Suppliers love to talk, so you've talked to the people who make batter and say, well, you know, what kind of batter should we use? So they'll tell you more than they should sometimes. It was difficult. And our objective wasn't to make good onion rings. It was to make onion rings exactly the same as the competition, because then it's an easy sell. You don't have to have something unique. And that was not as easy as you would think. And we could make better tasting ones. We could put them in a blind test and ours would win, but they were a little different. And the objective was make the same as the other guy.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't know how to make onion rings. The deal we made is still going, still one page, but it's altered in many ways, of course, over time with investments and so on. Yeah, we didn't know how to do it, but we didn't know how to do Blu-rays either or carrots.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in all those years I never once went back to Wallace or Harrison and said I need help. Your guys are giving me I always worked it out behind the scenes because I thought I could go to them once and I was going to save that. But if I became a nuisance to them then the relationship would disappear. So we've worked all these years and I never had to ask a favor. We've done it on a pure commercial basis. And I think it's worked well for both of us.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A very interesting, I would say typical maritime deal. I went to see Wallace McCain. This is over fifty years ago and said, look, I need something to keep my people busy. And have you any ideas? And he threw me a file on onion rings that they had looked at, and but it didn't fit because they were doing French fries year round. And he says, well, maybe you can do it. So needing something to do in the wintertime and off season to the file and we had a one-page agreement, which I still have, which gave us the exclusive right to make onion rings under the McCain label in Canada. And we've been doing that for over 50 years. And I would say only in the Maritimes. And of course, we've had our ups and downs.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We said, what can we do in the fall, extend the season? Because we start the 1st of August running 24 hours, seven days. And the minute bluebirds are done, we move to carrots. It's taken us quite a while to learn how to do it and do it really well, which we're doing now. But that was exactly it. And then we wanted to have a corps of people in the wintertime, and so we started making battered products for McCain foods.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. That's a lot of people do that. Why we succeeded is we tried to find a product we could run and run the hell out of it, as we would say. We're by far the largest wild blueberry produce. As we sit here today, we're processing carrots. We're the largest carrot, certainly carrot processor in Canada, but maybe in North America. So we learn how to do it and do it well and then just run it as much as we can. And then we do battered products and we try to do the same thing there. So stick to your knitting, do what you can do, and do more of it and try and grow it. Don't try and do everything. There's so many people fail by getting successful in one and then think they can do everything.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“make Blueberry jam an inverne. Well, you know, their intentions were great, but it made no economic sense to try and let Blueberry to Cape Britain make jam, and then bring everything else, whether it's raspberries or whatever strawberries from other areas”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But our real business was business to business as we call it, selling to jam manufacturers in Europe and pie manufacturers. And if you're a pie manufacturer, you're going to go where the applesire because they're 50% of the pies are apple. Or if you're in the jam business, you have to have a whole variety. So Oxford didn't have anything to offer. Blueberry jam in North America would be maybe five or six on the popularity list. We're a provider to manufacturers and whether it's smoothies or whatever. So there was no economy to scale. I remember we have this great golf course cabot down in Cape Breton and the industrial commission inverness before Ben built cabot came to see me to see if I was.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots of people have suggested we should have our own brand products. My great friend and mentor Prudy Crawford used to say John, you'll spend ten million dollars on a factory, but nothing on marketing.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we're big, big. looking at the horizon, as if famous by I think it was Dak Hammershole who said that only those who look at the horizon find the right road if you look at your feet you'll stumble. So we're big lookers at the horizon saying how can we do this? And a private business allows you to do that.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a cottage industry when I started. People were operating like a cottage industry and as the requirement for more capital and more capital and bigger operations came, most of the existing people really weren't up to mortgaging what they had. And they were a different generation. And so I'm a young guy that says I want to do this the rest of my life and I want to grow the industry. So it was more of an attitude, I think. I just fell into an industry that needed to be developed. In some ways, we provide it the leadership for that.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“harvesters that are made by local farmers or a mechanic, but the one that my brother and Lloyd Weatherby developed is kind of the standard”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There have been all kinds of people trying to Develop a mechanical harvester. And my brother and a mechanic looked at some of these efforts that were done in Maine and other places and they said, we can do this and we can do it better. So it took them quite a while because we really weren't focused. It would be something that we'd say in July. Oh, we should get that old machine out and see if we can pick Blu-rays with it. So the only thing I brought to the table was I got them a dedicated tractor and said we're going to start working on this in January. And they did, and they solved the problem. It took a couple of years, maybe, but very talented. And the same basic principles being used today that they develop back in the 80s. So it was a big effort and it cost some money. But again, we made it available to the farmers that it's still the standard.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure there's always lots of reasons our beekeepers say they went into the winter in poor condition so then they didn't survive well does mean that if you want to raise bees in Nova Scotia you know there's a second market in New Brunswick the Canadian Peninsula is ten days later than Nova Scotia and a micro coin So we could pollinate here and then take them to New Brunswick, but we can't do that. So our biggest input cost are bees, if the total is $2,000, a thousand of it's in B's. So it's a big, big factor and a big issue and a big disadvantage to Nova Scotia farmers, tremendous disadvantage.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Four or five times. I think if you had no honeybees imported and relied on Local pollinators you may get a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds if we use four to five hives which is considered high, but we can grow eight thousand or nine thousand pounds. So it's a tremendous difference. And with a research, we've been sponsoring research with Dr. Percival at the Agricultural College, and he's really taught us how to grow plants that are more productive with fungicides and fertilizers. We do have the basic crop there, but then you have to get a pollinated. It's a real problem. This year was particularly bad. The farmers lost, in many cases, 50% of the bees over winter. See, we should be taking those bees to Florida maybe in the wintertime.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do. We're the largest beekeeper in Nova Scotia by far and one of the largest in Canada because we couldn't get the bees so we had to start our own apry. We still don't have enough. And the farmers don't have enough.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I asked one of the guys about their business model and they said ABC, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, and then they go to Florida for the winter, and then they go back to California and the almonds and they do the road over again, and it makes them quite efficient, where in Nova Scotia, what can you do? You have to stay within the borders. We have a great junior hockey team in Halifax, the Mooseheads. And it's like saying you can play in the queue, but you have to use only Nova Scotia inputs. And you can't bring anybody yet. It's not only bees, there's just restrictions all over the place on border crossing, and there's been panels and people studying at Harperhead study group, and everybody finds the same thing. It's kind of ridiculous, but that's the country we live in, but there's always hope.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the only jurisdictions in North America that have restrictions historically was about protectionism. Some local beekeepers got together and lobbied the government and said, we don't want others coming in here. This is our market. But that's a small business compared to the Blu-ray business. So we're held hostage by a lack of pollinators in Nova Scotia.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The biggest single cost are the rental of honey bees for pollination. You know, these berries, they're fifteen hundred blueberries a pound. Every blossom has to be visited by a bee to get a blueberry. So we require a lot of hives. And I was reading an article this morning on the Canadian economy and where Scotia Bank had put out a report that said if we would eliminate the borders within our provinces, that it was something like two to seven billion dollars of efficiency that would come to Canadians. So in our B business, we're stuck with restrictions. We can bring bees from the Okanagan Valley all the way to New Brunswick, and we have to get permission through each province, and we get the permits. But when it comes to Nova Scotia border, no. So Nova Scotia and PEI.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the way it was required. So we started buying small systems and tying them together, and then we had the opportunity to get Halvax and eventually Dartmouth basically all of Nova Scotia except Glaysban a little bit in Cape Breton. We just kept believering and levering and buying and buying some more. It was hardly a year that we didn't have an acquisition.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We haven't shied away from using debt. Although today our balance sheets are in great shape, but through the years we've always been what I would say almost fully levered, the food business we were levered, but we had good assets, the cash flow wasn't as consistent as you'd like, but in the cable business we were buying cable companies all over Atlantic Canada and out west in Ontario. But the cash flow was pretty consistent. You could budget it and see where you were going. So I wasn't afraid of debt. And I think that separated me from the original cable owners. There were lots of them as the industry developed and fiber came along and we started tying them together and there was a lot more capital involved. Lots of the small town operators just decided that it was time to move on, that they didn't want to lever themselves.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say eighty three was kind of a transformative year. It's also the year that we bought control with Stuart Rath of Halifax Cable. It took us from being Operating small rural towns to having the major city. And so those were basis that we've built on. We weren't that well financed, so lots of borrowing and lots of convincing banks we could do it. So 83 was a big year.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not quite right. Nova Scotia, Maine is the mother of the wild blueberry industry, but Lake St. John is also quite a big production area.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That were clearing. We're really excited about the potential in New Brunswick. We're going to have more acres and blueberries than the Brunswick has in potatoes. So it's going to change the Canadian Peninsula and the economy there.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“some of these farms had already been taken over by spruce trees weather quite thick or scattered and we would cut the spruce trees down and we had a blueberry field. Now the industry in Maine which is the mother of the industry had about a fifty fifty ratio between old farms which tended to be smaller than they were here but then they had the blueberry barrels which were big fields that were a pine forest originally and then through forest fires they became, you know, there's history written about them picking blueberries in the 1700s on these barrens. They'd been burnt over the years. And so that's a different industry. And now in New Brunswick on the south side of New Brunswick again it's old farmland but on the north shore it's pine forest.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're right. There's different bases in Nova Scotia on abandoned farmland on the back roads where people moved out, I say, in the thirties when rural electricity went through didn't go to every back road. Now when we're talking about wireless and internet, we have to be in every back road. It doesn't matter whether there's just a camp there, they want internet. Compare that with rural electrification, which did the back roads, but not the real back roads. And so a lot of people want electricity went through, moved off the back road farms. And those farms eventually became Blueberry Fields. They revert to nature, spruce trees grow on them. Blueberry plants grow on them, usually 30 years after they were farmed by a farmer. And so they're not planted there naturally, and in many cases,”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do we've developed quite a while ago a philosophy that says if it's good for us, why don't we share it with the farmers? A lot of them deal with us and bring us their fruit. If we can make them more efficient, that keeps us in business and we're continually saying to our own farm people and to the farm community, we have to be more efficient. We have to compete in the world. We're competing with all fruits and all foods. So if you're going to do that, you have to grow more pounds per acre and do it more efficiently. So that's the way you stay in business.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we have a lot of money invested in the factories. Our ideal position would be to grow half them on our own farms and buy half from farmers. If you took the extreme and bought them all from the farmers, then you could be pretty vulnerable to competition running the price up too much or the growers ganging up on you. I mean, they're all great guys, but you don't want to be 100% in your money tied up in the factories. And the other side is we don't want to have a hundred percent of the industry that wouldn't be good politics. We need a good farming community and we enjoy working with the farm community and we've got friends we've had for 50, 60 years.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I ever really understood that we could grow to what it is, and that it would be a base to grow other things and other companies and other businesses. You know, we've had good years and bad years, but we've made it work. When I started in the industry, the wild blue-ray industry was forty million pounds in total, and I hoped to do two of that. And today the industry is over three hundred men getting closer to four, and we do half of it. We couldn't see the growth, but of course we made a major acquisition in 1983 in Maine. We bought one of the two largest operations in Maine. And then more recently, we're developing a lot of land in the Acadian Peninsula, but it's probably pretty mature now.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT