USA Today
Townsend Kyser looks over the 750 acres of catfish ponds scattered over his Hale County farm and wonders about the future.
The 33-year-old is a third-generation catfish farmer. The family business started in 1969 when his grandfather, Joe Kyser, built some of the first ponds designed to raise catfish in the state. Now it's up to him, his father, Bill, and his brother, Ashley, to keep things going.
It isn't easy, he says.
The American catfish industry has hit hard times of late, largely because of two factors: the tremendous increase in feed costs and of cheaper Asian fish flooding the market, Townsend Kyser says.
"We want to compete on a level playing field; we feel like we can win on a level playing field," he says. "But the foreign fish is so much cheaper than what we can produce. ... But the market is the market. The cheap imports are competition, but they also deflate prices that the market can stand."
The biggest reason foreign fish is cheaper is labor costs, says Mitt Walker of the Alabama Farmer's Federation.
"In America, we have to pay farm help, and people that work in the processing plants at least minimum wage," he says. "That's much more of a labor cost that the subsistence wages in Asia. Also American farmers have to live up to government standards for feed, water quality and other factors that drive up production costs."
Imported fish averages about a dollar a pound cheaper, he says. Catfish is just like any other commodity, as the price often varies from day to day. Over the past several months, domestic catfish has come in between $3 and $3.50 a pound, he says. Imported fish has averaged between 85 cents and a dollar less in that time frame, Walker says.
In 2009, there were about 129 million pounds of fish imported into the country under the name of catfish, a huge increase from 3.4 million pounds in 1999, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Catfish farming in America — called "aquaculture" — is a multibillion-dollar industry.
Mississippi is America's leading catfish producer, followed closely by Alabama, says Roger Barlow, president of the Catfish Institute in Jackson, Miss. Other catfish-producing states include Louisiana and Arkansas. The industry employs more than 13,000 people and generates an economic impact of more than $4 billion a year in each of the four states that produce the fish, institute figures show.
Along with the threat posed by the imports, costs of raising catfish in this country have gone up, Walker says. From about 2003 to 2007, the cost of catfish feed averaged $235 per ton, he says. In 2008, that cost skyrocketed to $390 a ton and hasn't come down much since, he says.
"Catfish feed is made of soybean and corn meal, so when grain prices go up, the feed goes up," Walker says. "Having your production costs go up like that is hard to absorb. American catfish farmers produce a quality product. We have seen growth of 5 to 7% a year in the market until this year and last year.
"That's when we really saw the impact of the cheaper, imported fish."
Farm-raised catfish are grown in shallow ponds and fed a diet of high-protein pellets. It takes about two years to grow a fish that will reach 1½ to 2 pounds, the perfect size for sale, Barlow says.
Making sure that fish is safe is vital, says Carole Engle, director of the Aquaculture Fisheries Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. She has made several visits to Asia, touring fish production and processing sites as well as reviewing auto transport processes.
"The imports are the cheapest fish on the market," she says. "And there are serious food-safety issues associated with imported fish. In America, the wells that provide the water for catfish ponds are tested regularly. In Asia, fish are grown in races (channels) in rivers. The fish tend to take up what's in the water. There aren't those type of controls in other nations."
Engle says tests on imported fish show levels of antibiotics that have been banned in America, along with other toxic compounds. "People need to be concerned with where their food comes from," she says.
"If you order a plate of catfish, you want to know that is safe for your family to eat."
The Catfish Institute is backing a nationwide push that has restaurants tell the country of origin for the fish they serve. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee already require that, Barlow says.
"We started that push in 2009," he says. "We want country of origin labeling to be the law nationwide."
