End of poll 2: results

My latest poll that run on this blog for the last 5 months was: “Farmed caviar in times of economic crisis. What will happen?”

Well, lots of water went under the bridge. According to the international press, the economic crisis is facing its final (delicate) stage. Hopefully the job market does better than everybody is expecting, which would trigger more optimism around this issue. And after the expression ‘economic crisis’ became inflationary, people recently switched to ‘swineflu’. All the better for the caviar industry.

But as its the case with all the polls, this one was rather subjective than objective and more importantly, it was of prophetic nature. So, are golden caviar days lying ahead of us? Or is the fun around the eggs doomed and will it become demonized?

Lets see. Here are the possible answers with the respective results:

Caviar price remains high or goes up – sector keeps growing: 11%

Caviar gets ‘cheaper’ – competition smaller: 14%

Caviar gets tag of ‘political incorrectness’. Free fall of demand and offer: 15%

The industry splits up into ‘premium farms’ ($$$) and ‘cheap farms’ ($): 60%

The obviously predominant prophecy is, that in the (near) future caviar producers around the world will split up into producers for the masses (= cheap caviar) and exclusive caviar producers with less annual production volume (= expensive caviar). With ‘less annual production volume’ I mean produers who target up to a max. of 10tons per year. Anything above I consider as a sturgeon breeding farm that cannot work and monitor each fish individually. Therefore loosing ‘control’ over the product and its quality. Such projects follow ‘the bigger the better’ mantra. Don’t get me wrong: size DOES matter. But this time its quite the oposite: the lesser the better!

Only time will tell if the ‘splitting up’ becomes a new reality. I tend to say, that the first signs on the horizon (e.g. huge caviar production facilities in China, Italy, the Middle East, the US, etc.) confirm this possibility.

But then again: this would do good to the very few top producers who want nothing more than replacing the wild caviar with the better: premium farmed caviar!

Soon there will be the 3rd poll online. Stay tuned for more!