BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) -- Crawfish season in Louisiana this year was heavily affected by the summer drought in 2023, an arctic blast and rising costs for farmers.
Anyone who wanted to buy live or boiled crawfish faced sky-high prices at retailers. Crawfish prices remained higher than usual through much of the season, selling for as much as almost $13 per pound at one point.
LSU AgCenter crawfish expert Mark Shirley said production was "way below normal" because of the lack of rainfall. He said many crawfish ponds had zero production in December, January, February and March. Crawfish ponds that did have production only produced around 10% of the normal amount.
Starting last year, around 384,000 acres were projected for production. Shirley said one-third had zero production and two-thirds had below-average production.
Louisiana leaders called for federal assistance for the industry. A letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture from Congressman Clay Higgins (R-La.) said agriculture experts cited potential losses of nearly $140 million.
The U.S. Small Business Administration offered low-interest federal disaster loans to crawfish farmers in the spring and the USDA request was granted in May. In a statement from USDA Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux, he said updates were being made to include crawfish production in the emergency assistance program.
According to Shirley, a large portion of the stock died in the late summer of 2023. While rain in December helped, crawfish didn't grow until later in spring.
He said farmers "saw the writing on the wall" and roughly a third of crawfish farm acres flooded in the fall were drained early for rice crops.
Shirley said farmers faced a "double whammy" in the 2024 season because of the shortage and the rising costs of expenses. Farmers saw an increase in costs for farm inputs, pumping water, fuel, electricity, bait, labor and traps. Shirley said he doesn't expect costs to go down significantly in the upcoming season.
"How things look right now, we could possibly have a more normal crawfish season for the 2025 season," said Shirley.
Shirley said rainfall this summer has helped and depending on how the weather shakes out for the rest of August and September, things could be looking up. Weekly rains would benefit farmers.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service released their updated summer weather outlook for August, September and October. It showed while it'll be hot, the Gulf Coast is expected to get more rain than usual.
"Most farmers who had a rice-crawfish rotation management on their farm were able to get a sufficient amount to stock to prepare for this coming season," said Shirley.
According to Shirley, the acreage of crawfish farms has increased in the last 20 years, but he guesses that it could level off at this point.
Farmers have until the end of September to report their intended acres for crawfish.
