Farmers, restaurants and consumers all feel the strain of a crawfish shortage this season. So on Monday, experts met with farmers to discuss why we're seeing fewer crawfish in Acadiana.
"Previous years we usually got going a little faster. But the size is a bit smaller I think this year than it has been in the past," said Donnie Fisher, a crawfish farmer in St. Landry Parish.
From the traps to the table, crawfish has been in high demand but short supply so far this year.
"The crawfish have been a little slow," said Randol's restaurant owner, Frank Randol. "we've been in it long enough, we know we're going to go through these cycles."
Randol's along with several other restaurants in Acadiana even ran out of their most popular item just a few weeks ago.
"We've been lucky, couple nights we've run out but we don't expect to run out anymore," said Randol.
On Monday, researchers from the LSU AgCenter met with crawfish farmers from across the region to talk about production and what could be hurting their crawfish crops.
"I just wanted to see if they had anything different than what I've been doing that would offer me to catch a little better crawfish," said Fisher.
But the experts said this season's shortage is out of the farmers' hands. The problem comes from the weather.
"Things like a dry fall, a very cold winter up to this point has impacted the crawfish crop," said Robert Romaire, a professor at the LSU AgCenter.
Romaire is optimistic though, saying just because the season started off slow, doesn't mean crawfish crops won't pick up in the Spring.
"Because we have not had much crawfish up to this point, doesn't mean we're not going to have a good bit of crawfish from this point on," said Romaire
Randol said he's already seeing better yields and experts said in March and April we should be seeing much more and bigger crawfish.


Permalink| Comments