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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Fuel, feed costs crippling US catfish industry
  • Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:56:38 -0600


Of course it is. It's unsustainable.
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Fuel, feed costs crippling US catfish industry
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1310ap_catfish_blues.html

By SHELIA BYRD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
photo
A basket full of Quiver River Aquaculture Inc., catfish fingerlings
are pulled from their pond near Moorhead, Miss., June 3, 2008, for transport
to another farm where they will be raised to fillet size. The escalating
costs for feed, gas and transportation have forced some catfish farmers to
close operations, dry their ponds and retill the soil for other crops. (AP
Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

MOORHEAD, Miss. -- Rick Moyer gazes at the sun-charred bottom of the pond
next to his 600-acre catfish farm and shakes his head - another farmer
scrambling to stay solvent has drained the pond and will till it for row
crops.

With soaring prices for just about everything needed to raise their fish -
fuel to feed - catfish farmers are anxious. Some are shutting down altogether.

Anywhere else in the country, the situation might not seem so dire. But there
are only a handful of industries generating jobs in the poverty-stricken
Delta, which also has some of the nation's highest illiteracy rates.

The casinos that had been bustling along the Mississippi River in the
northern part of the Delta have started to see layoffs. That's one less
option for former workers at catfish farms in the nearly dozen counties in
the Delta, where unemployment runs in double digits in some areas.

"The real problem I see is that after the decline of the catfish industry,
these displaced workers, they have no place to go," said state Rep. Willie
Bailey, D-Greenville. "These are nontransferable skills to other jobs in the
Delta."

Agriculture creates more than 257,000 jobs in Mississippi, most of them in
the Delta, said David Waide, president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau. Cotton
and catfish harvesting, processing and the building of equipment for those
industries are all done in the Delta, which isn't the case for soybeans,
corn, wheat or milo.

About 95 percent of the nation's catfish comes from Arkansas, Louisiana,
Alabama and Mississippi, and farmers in all those states are suffering.

Moyer's farm, down a gravel road off U.S. 82 in Sunflower County, employs
four full-time workers and five seasonal ones. Farms just like his have
helped support 10,000 jobs across the Delta, but lately it's been tough.

Farmers are getting 80 cents a pound for fish that sell whole for $3.27 to
$3.99 a pound in grocery stores, but production costs run as much as 90
cents, Wade said. One processor, Consolidated Catfish in Isola, already has
laid off 50 of its 550 workers and plans more, owner Dickie Stevens said.

Moyer spent $500,000 on feed last year. He'll spend almost twice as much this
year as the price of feed has gone from $225 to $400 a ton.

Catfish feed is made of soybeans, corn and wheat - commodities at record high
prices. Feed manufacturers are using alternative corn gluten instead of corn
meal, reducing the price by $50 to $60 a ton, but even so, the price of feed
is pushing farmers out.

Two of Moyer's longtime catfish fingerling customers are no longer in the
business. To survive, Moyer plans to reduce his production next year and
continue to sell the tiny fish left over.

"It's my only livelihood," said the 46-year-old Moyer, who's been farming in
the expansive Delta since 1985. "So as long I can, I'm going to try to make
it."

At Moyer's farm on a recent afternoon, a worker stood waist-deep in a pond
helping two others in a boat trap fingerlings with a big net and put them in
buckets. Two other workers on the back of a truck parked next to the pond
unloaded the fingerlings - hundreds of pounds, one bucket at a time - into
tanks for transport to ponds where the fish will grow to market size.

Calvin Jones, a former school teacher working at Moyer's farm, said he makes
more money as a contract employee at fish farms than he did in the classroom.

"You raise fish. You get them out of the pond and you sell them. That's
pretty much all you do. There's no genius to it," Jones said.

U.S. catfish growers - in sometimes bitter competition with catfish raised in
Asia - had sales of $445 million in 2007, down 8 percent from the previous
year, U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics show. The farming acreage
also dropped by 6 percent. Production peaked in 2003 at 660 million pounds
but has been decreasing since, said Roger Barlow of the trade group, Catfish
Farmers of America.

While farmers are taking a hit, consumers might not feel the effect of the
catfish decline for a while because retailers have a choice between U.S. and
Asian catfish, and they usually go with the cheaper of the two, said Terry
Hanson, an aquaculture economist with Mississippi State University.

Still, the cost of a catfish entree will have to catch up to the production
cost at some point, Hanson said.

Joey Lowery, a farmer in Newport, Ark., believes the reduced acreage might
help in the long term. Farmers will get high prices to keep up with supply
and demand, he said, adding that he's farming only 350 of his 500 acres.

"I really feel like we'll be cut back to a third or half in production," said
Lowery. "It's bad that all the work that went into building this industry to
where it is, it's going to have to make that kind of adjustment."






  • [Livingontheland] Fuel, feed costs crippling US catfish industry, Tradingpost, 06/23/2008

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