The 2024 Crawfish Crop: A Record-Setting Season for All the Wrong Reasons

Story and photos by Bruce Schultz

The 2024 crawfish crop has been disastrous so far, affecting farmers and businesses that depend heavily on the crustacean, and the impact on the area economy will be significant. 

Normally, crawfish pumps more than a quarter billion dollars into the Louisiana economy but that amount this year will be drastically reduced.

Eric Thomas, a Rayne crawfish dealer, said the market is looking better than the past 2 months. The price has dropped, and more people are eating crawfish.

“The price was $8 a pound and now it’s $4,” he said on March 4 when the price fell by $1. “The industry has never seen prices like this.”

He said the market has limited the number of restaurant customers. “There are only so many eaters at a certain price.”

​But he said the bad publicity about the crawfish market has probably led many consumers to give up on the South Louisiana staple, and that has put a damper on demand. 

“We’re starting to see more and more crawfish being caught,” he said. “In the last 5 to 6 days, things have picked up a lot.”

The market for smaller, peeling crawfish also has been affected. Most of the imported labor for that sector hasn’t been brought into the U.S., Thomas said, so it is affecting Mexican workers who depend on work here.

Thomas, business partner with farmer Russ Cassedy of Crowley, has a seafood restaurant in Crosby, Texas, but he said its business model is based mainly on crawfish. He had several drive-through crawfish businesses in Louisiana, and he opened the Crawfish Hut restaurant in Rayne in 2003.

His wholesale  business has customers in Dallas, Mississippi, Alabama and North Carolina, but supplying those buyers has been difficult to impossible. 

He said the current volume he is buying now is typical for mid- to late January.
Many farmers are giving up and draining early to plant rice or soybeans, he said, especially in southern Vermilion Parish where salinity has been a problem. 

Thomas said his business usually employs eight workers but now he only has four on the payroll. He only needs one driver so far this year, but he usually has three.

Thomas also has rice acreage. Usually, rice fields only used for one crop of rice will produce crawfish earlier since they are harvested and reflooded earlier, he said, than fields where a ratoon crop (or second crop) is grown. But this year, he said, it made no difference.

Even fields that were planted with rice just for crawfish production have not shown any difference in timing or production, he said.

Thomas is amazed at last summer’s brutal heat. Usually, he said, it takes about 21 days for a field to be drained for harvest. But last year, a field would be dry enough to cut in 6 days.

He said pumps had to run constantly to keep rice fields flooded, costing as much as $10,000 a month per pump for electricity. Rice yields were higher last year, he said, but that was offset by lower quality which brought price penalties.

Thomas recalled a similar downturn in the market. “Last time I saw this was with Icon in 1999.”

The Icon seed treatment insecticide, used against rice water weevils, was blamed for a bad crawfish harvest in 1999, and farmers joined in a class-action lawsuit against the product’s maker, Aventis. The case settled in 2004 during a trial, resulting in a $45 million settlement but plaintiffs received a little more than half that after attorneys’ fees and court costs were paid. The company did not admit doing anything wrong and it blamed the bad crawfish season on drought conditions.

Thomas said he is planning to restock his fields with crawfish from a field that will be left untouched. He expects crawfish from the Atchafalaya Basin will be too expensive for stocking fields when that crop starts producing by late spring. 

Normally, Thomas buys crawfish for resale until July 4.
 
“If we can get to the Fourth of July with mild temperatures, people can make some money.”

Interestingly, Thomas said he knows two farmers in Acadia Parish whose crawfish production has increased over last year. He said they both have fields of about 35 acres and neither stock their fields. Their crawfish is not harvested with boats that leave ruts in the mud, and they have their rice cut in July or August to reflood the fields immediately. “They’re usually the first ones to have crawfish.”

​Todd Fontenot, LSU AgCenter crawfish specialist, said the catch is improving.

“I’m hearing things are a little more encouraging,” he said. ”But we’re still 10 to 15% of a normal supply.”

He said the catch rate is about a sack of crawfish, around 30 pounds, from 20 acres.

He said warmer weather should promote crawfish growth and reproduction, and that should help the crawfish industry recover some losses.

But he said it makes no sense that there are a few fields that are producing well alongside under-performing fields with identical growing conditions. “I can’t explain it. They’re doing everything the same.”

Rice farmers typically covered their costs with rice in the past few years, and they have depended on crawfish for their profit. 

Fontenot said it’s likely that more ponds will be drained early for rice planting. Farmers close to the coastal area are facing the dilemma of high salinity rates, he said, so that could limit the amount of rice planted there. And he’s also hearing that seed stocks for some long-grain rice varieties are in short supply. 

Higher crawfish prices also present another problem for farmers looking ahead to restocking crawfish. The usual rate is 60 pounds of crawfish per acre, Fontenot said. “It’s not good to restock with $2.50 or $3 crawfish because there goes your profit.” 

Farmers are looking at setting aside some fields of crawfish for restocking but that also chips away at potential income for this year.

Mark Shirley,  crawfish specialist with the LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant, said the effect of the low catch will be felt throughout South Louisiana which usually benefits from a $300 million economic impact. “I don’t think we’ll get half that this year, but maybe a third.”
He said it’s likely that crawfish boat builders will suffer, along with trap makers, bait dealers along with restaurants and drive-thru operations. And it will hurt business owners who depend on crawfish sales to make loan payments. 

“There’s a lot of debt out there,” he said. “It’s a ripple effect.”

Processing plants have not started peeling because of the high price, he said, and that’s resulted in foreign workers not being called up from Mexico or sent home. “Very likely, very little crawfish will be peeled.”

The high price and lower-than-usual harvest will open the door to foreign crawfish, he said, since the U.S. tariff on imported crawfish has expired. “There are a lot of problems associated when you run out of a product.”

Shirley said it’s likely that the drought and extreme heat at the worst time interfered with the growth and reproduction processes. “It was a double whammy.”

Tony and Jennifer Arceneaux, owners of Hawk’s Restaurant near Roberts Cove, are planning to open March 20, almost 2 months behind his usual start.

“It’s been a crazy year and a crazy season,” Tony said.

He said COVID put a damper on his business, then came the crawfish famine. “We really needed this season to make up for being closed the past 2 seasons.”

​Hawk’s usually  opens late January or early February, whenever the crawfish are the right size and maturity. “I’ve been doing this so long (42 years), I’d rather wait until they are decent.”
But this year, the poor catch and high prices pushed the opening date back. He is seeing signs that the catch and quality is improving. 

“Supply is getting better every day,” he said. "We’re headed in the right direction.”
Arceneaux said his biggest concern now is the effect this is having on his employees. He normally has 22 people working nights and days. The seasonal business helps those workers catch up on bills. “Some employees had to find other work.”

He also sympathizes with farmers. “A lot of these farmers are hurting right now. Those crawfish buy a lot of groceries.”

If the crawfish problem weren’t enough of a challenge, Arceneaux said his expenses have increased in the past 3 years. His mayonnaise used for special crawfish dip has tripled in price in the past 3 years, he said, and he uses 60 gallons a week. “That’s just an extra cost I hadn’t even thought about.”

As the owner of an established business, the Arceneauxs don’t have the heavy debt looming overhead that newer crawfish businesses, such as drive-thru operations, are facing. “It’s a scary thought. I’m glad I’m not in that situation.”

Michael Hundley of Acadia Parish, with a family farm and restaurant, knows first-hand the problems facing both ends of the industry.

He said the catch is improving, but it’s inconsistent. “One day it’s good and then one day it’s bad. The catch is 15 percent of what we usually catch. There are a lot of people not catching anything.”

“I’m hoping and praying we’ll have a reversal of years past,” he said. Usually, the catch starts at high levels and drops off as the season progresses, Hundley said. “Maybe this year it will be the opposite.”

He said the family restaurant, Mo’ Crawfish in the Mowata community, has about  half as many customers as usual. It is only open during crawfish season and this year it was scaled back to Tuesday through Sunday.

“The crowds have gotten better. The restaurant on Fridays is full and people are coming.”

But he said sales are about half of the usual amount.

Hundley realizes that subsidiary businesses are hurting also, such as seasoning sellers and trap makers. “It’s not just us as farmers or a restaurant. It’s everything. It affects the whole community and the whole parish.

The price fell again on March 11, he said, to $3 a pound. He said at $7-8 a pound, he was embarrassed selling for $10 a pound for boiled crawfish.

“The price should have never gone to where it was.”

Farmer Dane Hebert, who grows rice, crawfish, soybeans and sugarcane with his daughter, Laura, in northern Vermilion Parish, said their operation is producing more now. “The catch is slowly picking up and the size is getting better.”

Hebert said they are saving some crawfish for restocking, and it’s likely they will drain some fields early for rice planting.

The price drop didn’t surprise him. “I knew that would happen as soon as there was some kind of volume.” But he said the price may have fallen because consumption – or demand – has not kept up with the meager volume. He said a consumer is likely to pass on more expensive crawfish, “if you can buy a ribeye cheaper.”

The recent declaration of a disaster by Gov. Landry and requests for federal aid probably will help, Hebert said, but that assistance won’t happen soon.

“If we see anything this year, I’d be surprised.”

Hebert said he and Laura work their catch themselves along with local labor.

He said it’s possible they will be near a break even point if the catch continues to improve before Lent. 

He said the uncertainty of the crustacean has been enough to dissuade him from depending on the crustacean as a major income source. “I’ve always used crawfish as lagniappe. I knew better than to bank on it.”

Hebert said this year has provided difficult lessons in economics and biology.

“Crawfish are so dependent on Mother Nature,” Hebert said. “There are a lot of things we don’t know about crawfish.”