December 9, 2009

Low prices strangle US catfish industry

US catfish farmers and fishermen are giving up their business as low fish prices and high input costs make survival tough.

Overseas competition has held fish prices in check for the past decade, while production costs increased steadily with inflation and rising feed costs. As a result, US catfish pond acreage has declined by more than one third in the last decade.

Those that remain are fighting back against imports by waging a campaign to establish US catfish as a superior product.

Farmers have backed federal and state labelling laws requiring restaurants and grocery stores to label their catfish by country of origin, a move they hope will help rejuvenate domestic production.

US catfish farmers are now like frogs at the bottom of a barrel and they are looking for anything that can help them, said Steve Stephens, president of the Louisiana Catfish Farmers Association.

Catfish is the leading aquaculture industry in the US, with about 500 million pounds processed domestically in 2008. About 95 percent of the nation's catfish comes from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Soaring feed prices and an influx of cheap imports have cut into catfish production in recent years.

Production peaked at 660 million pounds in 2003, but has been decreasing ever since, according to Catfish Farmers of America.

Catfish production has dropped off at an even faster rate in Louisiana, from 65.7 million pounds of catfish in 1999 to 19.9 million pounds in 2008.

Louisiana currently has about 4,400 acres of catfish ponds, down about 10,000 acres since 1999.

Stephens said they have lost many producers in the last five years and the biggest culprit is low prices.

He said the downturn started three years ago when rising prices for feed grains caused feed prices to skyrocket. Catfish prices, however, have lagged around 70 cents per pound for the past decade, with imports from Vietnam and China keeping prices low.