Catfish Farmers Fight Fish Glut and High Feed Prices

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Saturday, September 01, 2012

Catfish Farmers Fight Fish Glut and High Feed Prices

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON — In the federal government’s efforts to help farmers and ranchers survive this year’s devastating drought, perhaps the most surprising step has been a dose of support for struggling producers of catfish.

It’s not that their ponds, shimmering across some of the poorest counties from Alabama to Arkansas, were drying up, although the catfish industry has been shriveling for 10 years.

Rather, catfish assistance came as part of a $170 million federal purchase of pork, chicken, lamb and fish announced in early August, all intended to prop up farmers hit by skyrocketing prices of feed like corn and soybeans.

The Agriculture Department, in addition to its routine purchases for school lunches and food banks, would buy an extra $10 million of catfish, the administration announced.

That would be more catfish than the government bought all last year, and enough to put a significant dent in a glut of catfish that has left fish farmers squeezed this year between rising feed costs and falling prices for the fish.

Whether it is enough to head off the continuing collapse of the industry is another question, catfish specialists say.

“I think we are seeing a change before our very eyes, quicker than we ever dreamed,” said Roger Barlow, executive vice president of the Catfish Farmers of America. “We have never had as high a feed cost and at the same time seen our pond-bank price go down,” Mr. Barlow said.

A $10 million purchase, at recent prices paid by the government, would be more than three million pounds of frozen catfish.

“That’s not a lot, but it can’t help but help,” said Craig Tucker, a catfish expert and former director of the Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center of Mississippi State University, in Stoneville.

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