La. crawfish harvest yields dismay
Farmers suffer after weather takes toll on shellfish population
ABBEVILLE, La. — Adlar Stelly is 42 years old, which means it is fair to say that he has been involved in farming crawfish in Louisiana for just shy of 42 years.
He grew up surrounded by the shallow ponds dotted with the netted crawfish traps set by his father. At 7, he was steering the boat while his older brother pulled in the traps. Before long, he graduated to emptying them himself. He and his brother now have about 3,000 acres of ponds of their own in southern Louisiana.
He has seen abundant seasons and others that were more sparse. But over all that time, he has never experienced a season as distressing as this one, where, week after frustrating week, the traps have been so consistently bare.
The haul at one pond on a recent day was enough to fill four sacks, each roughly the size of a large pillowcase. In a better year, that haul would have been 25, maybe even 30, sacks.
The persistent heat that roasted the Gulf Coast during a record-setting summer is still punishing Louisiana. Farmers and scientists say the summertime drought has delivered a blow to the state’s soul in a way that hurricanes or other extreme weather never have: It has come perilously close to ruining crawfish season.
Across the state, farmers have reported harvests as dire as Stelly’s, if not worse, even as they have shouldered the enormous cost of pumping in water for their dry ponds.
Crawfish prices have skyrocketed, reaching earlier in the season close to double what they were last year. Boiled crawfish, practically
a staple in Louisiana, has felt more like a luxury.
Last month, Gov. Jeff Landry even issued a disaster declaration, saying the industry “needs all the support it can get right now.”
The resulting turbulence and heartache reflect how crawfish figure into just about every facet of Louisiana: the economy, the culture, even blood pressure levels. (Veterans of crawfish consumption know to take off their rings because the sodium levels from the seasoning can swell their fingers.)
In Acadiana, the constellation of communities surrounding Lafayette that make up the heart of Cajun Louisiana, the smell of boils often wafts through neighborhoods. The odds are decent that any long line on a Friday night will lead to a popular boiling spot. And depictions of the decapods — bright red with claws, antennae and blackdot
eyes — are everywhere: crawfish curtains, crawfish tablecloths, crawfish paper towel holders, crawfish caps, crawfish T-shirts, crawfish earrings.
“It should be on the flag, you know what I’m saying?” Sean Suire, who owns the Cajun Table restaurant in Lafayette, said as he doused more seasoning on already seasoned crawfish, fresh from the boiler. “Without crawfish, there’s no party.”
Crawfish are often farmed alongside rice in soupy fields that are drained over the summer for the rice harvest. The crawfish then retreat into the earth to lay their eggs and emerge in the late fall as the ponds are refilled.
Only this past year, many crawfish were killed off by the heat or were forced to burrow deeper to survive, farmers and experts said.
“We know that drought can affect crawfish, but we didn’t know the extent of it,” said Mark Shirley, a longtime
crawfish specialist at the Louisiana State University AgCenter.
Farmers “spent three or four times as much on fuel and time pumping water,” he said. “The water was evaporating almost as fast as they were pumping it into the field.”
The harvest, which usually continues until June, has picked up modestly in recent weeks, and prices have dropped. Boiled crawfish were selling for $7 to $9 a pound around Lafayette, according to a recent scan of the Crawfish App that many use to track prices and find nearby boiling spots; they had been going for $12 or more around Mardi Gras in February. (An average person typically goes through about 3 pounds per sitting.)
Still, the damage has been done: There is no chance of making a profit this season, Stelly said. The best he can hope for is making enough
to cover his expenses.
Stelly recently traveled to Washington, reluctantly urging congressional representatives and federal officials to provide some financial support for the industry.
“I don’t want help,” he said. “I want to go to work, catch crawfish and make money.”
These days, Stelly does not spend as much time on the ponds as he once did. He also runs a dock where about 50 farmers in the area bring their catch so it can be sorted and delivered live to Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and even Florida.
His phone rings constantly. Buyers keep asking if the inventory is finally enough to make it worth the trip. Farmers relay their anxiety about what happens if they fail to recoup their costs. He tries to listen patiently to worries that sound a lot like his own.
The numbers have been alarming: In December, just 1,281 pounds of crawfish moved through the dock. That month the year before, it had been 78,000. In January, it took in roughly 4,340 pounds, compared with 158,000 the year before.
Crawfish farming is a fusion of science, art, faith, superstition and hard work. The formula varies from farmer to farmer. One says a successful day follows a storm, as the thunder rouses the crawfish out of the earth. Another credits his wife’s prayer. Many adhere to practices that have been handed down over generations.
And even still, the crawfish can remain mystifying.
“It’s a lot of luck,” said Suire’s father, Lucas, 60, who farms the same few hundred acres that his father and grandfather had. “I don’t understand crawfish. I’ve been doing this 39 years, and I still don’t know crawfish.”
The torturous summer was widely attributed to an El Niño weather pattern. And although some in the crawfish industry were reluctant to blame climate change, in a state that has been bombarded by powerful hurricanes, ice storms, wildfires and an ocean voraciously chewing away its coastline, here was yet another vivid display of nature’s volatility.
“Mother Nature has everything to do with it,” said Barry Toups, who has a crawfish farm in Vermilion Parish.
Stelly wants to expand the radius of where live crawfish can be delivered.
He also thinks of his daughters.
His oldest is studying agriculture business at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, with plans to plow what she learns back into the family business.
He wants to hand her a robust operation one day, but recent events have shaken his certainty.
“Right now, the future?” he said. “I really don’t know.”