Governor Landry has sent a letter to USDA requesting they provide much needed federal assistance for Louisiana’s crawfish industry which is struggling to harvest mudbugs this year because of last summer’s drought. Chairman of Crawfish Promotion and Research Board David Savoy says help is needed for farmers who have invested thousands of dollars and have not seen great results.
“We are the bottom part of this industry that has spent the money already. If somebody thinks that pumping this water is cheap, they need to come pay those electric bills.”
Louisiana State University’s Agriculture Center estimated the potential losses to be nearly $140 million due to the combined drought and freeze. While crawfish production is expected to pick up, Savoy says the severity of this year’s loss in crawfish production will continue to impact farmers.
“When they start talking about Joe Blow down the road catching pretty good, but that doesn’t erase the acres where there’s nothing or very little production.”
Savoy says farmers lost a third of its acres and it’s going to take efforts by the USDA to help the crawfish industry bounce back. He says crawfish production will be an ongoing issue for the next three to four years because…
“There’s no mama’s and papa’s to make the babies. Seeds are going to be horribly expensive and so that will be acres that don’t get seeded because you’ll have no money to go back and seed that.”
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