Catfish industry at 10-year low

LITTLE ROCK — The commercial catfish industry in Arkansas is continuing its downward spiral, with fish inventories and acreage at 10-year lows, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report.

Food-size catfish inventory fell 32 percent, to 27.7 million fish, down from almost 41 million last year. Water-surface acreage has been cut in half in the past two years, to under 15,000 acres that will be usedfrom July 1 through Dec. 31.

Catfish producers have been battered in recent years by high feed prices and competition from foreign imports. This is third consecutive year of decline for both inventory and acreage.

Many catfish farmers have left the business entirely or have begun the process of turning to row crops.

Alice-Sidney Farms LP in Chicot County near Jerome is in the process of converting all its ponds to rice fields, said BillTroutt, the farm’s manager. The 7,000-acre farm once operated 1,400 acres of fish ponds, and is now down to 600. Barring a sharp drop in grain prices or foreign imports, Troutt expects to be out of the catfish business altogether in two years.

“Imports have just killed us to the point that it’s not profitable,” Troutt said. “We’ve been losing money every year for four years now ... so we made the decision to exit the industry.”

More than 129 millionpounds of filleted, fresh, chilled or frozen catfish was imported to the U.S. in 2009, up from 8 million a decade ago, according to USDA figures released Monday. Last year there were 476 million pounds of domestically produced catfish sold.

Joey Lowery has taken about 25 percent of his 450 acres of ponds in Newport out of production. He said the competition from Asian and Vietnamese fish has put an “unofficial ceiling” on prices.

Lowery, who is president of Catfish Farmers of America, is campaigning to have importedcatfish inspections moved from the Food and Drug Administration to the USDA, arguing that the move will put imported and domestic fish on a level playing field.

Carole Engle, director of the Aquaculture/Fisheries Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, said the volume of imports coming in makesit difficult for farmers to pass on increased costs to consumers. Feed prices rose last year to more than $400 a ton, the highest ever seen inthe industry, she said.

“There is not a way that I could find for catfish farming to be profitable [at that feed price],” she said. Though feed prices have since dropped below $300 a ton, which Englesaid allows producers to make money, many farmers have already begun the process of taking ponds out of production.

Arkansas lost substantially more acreage than Mississippi or Alabama, the two states that rank ahead of it in terms of acreage used for catfish production.

“People in Alabama raising catfish don’t have as many other options. ... They don’t have the option to go into row crops,” She said. “Farmers in the Delta have quite-profitable options.”