BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA (LSU AgCenter) — This year’s crawfish season is shaping up to be a mixed bag. Farmers are in the middle of peak harvest, but the catch so far has been average, with several challenges impacting production.
Louisiana State University AgCenter Crawfish Specialist Todd Fontenot says dry conditions and rising energy costs have made the season more difficult, especially for producers relying on irrigation. He also points to apple snails as a growing issue. The invasive species can clog traps and reduce production, particularly in ponds that depend on surface water.
“Snail numbers seem to have been up this year, giving a lot of producers a lot of havoc,” Fontenot said, “I’ve heard of a couple of producers who have quit harvesting certain fields because the population of apple snails were so high.”
At the same time, labor shortages are affecting the processing side of the industry. Facilities that process crawfish tail meat have been idled or slowed due to issues with the H-2B guest worker program, leading to less product on the market.
Rice and crawfish farmer Alan Lawson says that could open the door for imports: “The grocery stores don’t want empty shelves. Restaurants don’t want to take crawfish off the menu, so they’re going to go get it where they have to get it, and we will lose market share. Once you lose market share, it’s hard to get market share back.”
Louisiana has more than 400,000 acres of crawfish ponds, accounting for about 90 percent of production, with the remaining catch coming from the wild.
