By C. Greg Lutz, Pramod Sambidi and R. Wes Harrison, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, glutz@agctr.lsu.edu, psambil@lsu.edu, and rharrison@agctr.lsu.edu.

Profile revised June 2011.

 
History
Although crawfish had been consumed for centuries by both native Americans and Europeans, commercial sale of crawfish (also called crayfish, crawdads or crawdaddys) in Louisiana only began in the late 1800s. At that time, supplies were harvested from natural waters throughout the southern region of the state.

During the 1930s, with the development of improved transportation and cold storage, crawfish markets in Louisiana shifted from local consumption in rural areas to metropolitan areas such as Baton Rouge and New Orleans. During this same period, the adoption of crawfish traps resulted in much more efficient harvest methods.

Around 1950, the practice of re-flooding rice fields after harvest became commonplace as a method to produce crawfish for harvest during the autumn, winter and early spring. This practice of crawfish ‘farming’ eventually spread to impounded woodlands and marshland as well. By the mid-1960s, acreage had increased to approximately 10,000 acres of managed crawfish ponds. At this point, an industry based on peeling crawfish became established, which in turn fueled further expansion of both crawfish farming and wild harvests. Acreage continued to increase, from approximately 44,000 acres in the mid-1970s to roughly 115,000 acres in the 1990s.
 
By the early 1990s, crawfish farming in Louisiana was a well-established business. Crawfish were moved through several marketing channels, including live sales, processing plants and exports of whole boiled crawfish to Scandinavian countries. The main concerns on the minds of producers were yields per acre and the extent to which wild crawfish harvests might impact prices from year to year.

Following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, pond-raised crawfish yields in Louisiana are rebounding. In 2010, nearly 110.9 million pounds of crawfish were raised, with a total value of more than $168.5 million.  (Louisiana Summary 2010)

Background
Crawfish aquaculture in Louisiana involves two species: the red swamp crawfish and the white river crawfish. Both species are native to the region and well adapted to coping with the wet-dry cycle found throughout much of the Gulf coastal plains. These species spend most of their life in open water, but they are prone to burrow into the soil when water levels fall and natural backwater and floodplain habitats dry out. Burrows typically extend to a depth sufficient to allow for one to several inches of standing water in the bottom of the burrow. The standing water serves as a reservoir for the crawfish to bathe their gills in, although they spend most of their time higher up in the burrow. Burrowing is also particularly important in the life cycle of both species, because the burrow is the preferred environment for females to lay their eggs.
 
Over the past decade, a number of fundamental changes have overtaken the industry, and the full impacts of some of these changes are only now being realized. Perhaps the greatest change in Louisiana’s crawfish farming industry involves the processing (peeling) sector. Historically, whenever crawfish harvests exceeded what could be moved through market channels to restaurants and retail consumers, product found its way to processing plants to be peeled and sold as fresh or frozen tail meat. This marketing outlet served to moderate drastic price swings and provided regional economic benefits in terms of adding value and creating employment. During the mid-1990s, these enterprises came under assault from low-priced, imported crawfish meat.

The economics of trying to compete with imported product from China, coupled with difficulties obtaining suitable labor during a period of economic prosperity, began to take their toll on one processor after another. Processors were already hard pressed to obtain raw product at prices that would allow them to compete at the seafood counter. In 1996 there were an estimated 90 to 100 crawfish processors in Louisiana; today there are approximately 15.
 
Industry Structure
The supply chain from crawfish producers to consumers is complex. Crawfish are harvested from production ponds by regular trapping. Traps are typically baited and ‘run’ two to five days per week although some ponds are harvested more or less frequently. Crawfish are packed live into onion sacks (35- to 45-pound capacity) and transported to the first point of sale.
 
Although some producers market a portion of their harvests, by the sack, directly to the public, to restaurants or to small seafood dealers, most sell to buyers that specialize in procuring and distributing large volumes of crawfish. Sacks full of live crawfish are stored in coolers and subsequently delivered to restaurants and seafood retailers. These crawfish are boiled for consumption – either in restaurants, by consumers or at retail outlets for sale by the pound.
 
Size grading often takes place at some point in the supply chain, especially by mid-season as supplies become abundant. Some producers are equipped to grade their harvests directly from the trap, while others grade on or near the pond bank. Others rely on their buyers to grade their product. To a limited extent, processing plants still serve as an outlet for some portion of the smaller grades of crawfish, providing peeled tail meat for sale by restaurants and retail outlets.  
 
In many years, significant harvests of wild crawfish also occur in Louisiana. This production moves through the same market channels, affecting prices. In recent years, many of the traditional areas of wild harvest have failed to produce large numbers of crawfish. To what extent this reduction in wild harvest might reflect long-term trends in hydrology and habitat alteration remains uncertain.  
 
Historic Profitability of Industry Segments
Profitability is difficult to define for crawfish production and processing. Prices are variable, generally declining over the course of the season. Yields in production ponds are highly variable and affected by a number of factors, while production costs (primarily harvesting costs) are fairly constant. Estimates of profitability in crawfish farming range as high as $300 to $500 per acre, but $100 to $200 per acre is probably more typical of an average operation. Processors’ profitability levels are difficult to characterize and are influenced by economies of scale, labor availability, types of boiling, cooling and storage systems and market relationships.

Demand
Consumption trends for aquacultured crawfish are difficult to evaluate separately from year-to-year variation in availability. Since crawfish are perishable and even frozen tail meat has a limited shelf life, usage generally tracks production. Consumer recognition of crawfish and market acceptance has spread significantly over the past decade, although the volume of Louisiana production consumed in other states is still comparatively insignificant. Consumption of imported tail meat and whole crawfish from China is significant in Louisiana markets and is on the rise in the United States as a whole.
 
Drivers of Demand
To a large extent, crawfish can be considered a specialty seafood item among Louisiana consumers, comparable to shrimp, crabs and oysters. Supply and demand relationships are reflected in price variations from year to year and even from week to week during the harvest season.

U.S. per person consumption of crawfish in 2002 was approximately 0.25 pounds. In Louisiana per person consumption of locally produced crawfish is approximately 10.4 pounds, because 70 percent of the crawfish produced in the state is consumed locally. Consumers outside of traditional crawfish-consuming regions still tend to view crawfish as a novelty. Demand in these areas largely depends on promotion and consumer education regarding the culinary attributes and preparation of crawfish. 
 
Production
Official estimates are not available, but industry observers suggest that Louisiana typically accounts for 90 percent of total U.S. production, depending on the season. Statistics for Louisiana distinguish between farmed and wild crawfish. In 2010 1,202 producers raised crawfish and 1,715 fishermen harvested wild crawfish. The crawfish harvest in Louisiana totaled nearly 110.9 million pounds of pond-raised crawfish, which were sold for more than $168.5 million; the wild crawfish catch totaled 16.6 million pounds and sold for $13.3 million. Limited harvests of farmed crawfish occur in other states, such as Arkansas, South Carolina and Texas.

Over the years, Louisiana crawfish production has evolved to take advantage of the crawfish's natural adaptations to erratic water levels. As a result, the crawfish production season overlaps portions of two successive calendar years. Ponds are flooded during the autumn, harvest occurs throughout the winter and spring, and draining takes place by early summer to allow for a vegetative crop such as rice to be grown. When the pond is re-flooded the following autumn, the vegetation begins a long, slow breakdown process, providing a debris-based food chain that ultimately results in harvestable crawfish. Under traditional production scenarios, crawfish do not need to be re-stocked.
 
Pond draining in the spring provides a cue for mature crawfish to burrow within the pond levees. Under normal rainfall conditions, sufficient amounts of water infiltrate the soil to maintain a level of saturation within burrowing access for most crawfish, even after ponds are drained. Under conditions of prolonged drought, the saturation horizon can drop to a point where it is no longer accessible. Even under these conditions, however, crawfish can often survive within their burrows as long as humidity levels remain fairly high. Unfortunately, reproduction cannot take place in a dry burrow because some standing water is required to allow for proper fertilization of eggs when they are deposited under the female’s tail.

Females that survive the summer with sufficient water in their burrows typically begin to lay eggs as early as late August. At some point during the fall, a female crawfish will decide to leave her burrow, often with eggs or newly hatched young still attached to her tail. These young crawfish begin growing immediately and can reach marketable size in as little as six to eight weeks. As a result of their reproductive biology, the number and timing of young-of-the-year crawfish entering a pond during any one season are both highly variable. This can lead to size variability, both among ponds and within them. Ponds with relatively low densities tend to produce the largest crawfish, while ponds with excessive reproduction often suffer from stunting, or density-related cessation of growth, prior to the end of the harvest season. With sufficient rainfall or irrigation, red swamp and white river crawfishes are well adapted to live out their life cycles in a typical Louisiana production pond. 
 
A large portion of Louisiana’s crawfish aquaculture, typically in the range of 40 to 70 percent, is practiced in conjunction with rice production. Crawfish can be either be produced in permanent rotation with a rice crop year after year or in a rice-crawfish-fallow rotation, in which re-stocking takes place each cycle. As the economics of rice production in Louisiana deteriorated over the past decade, many rice producers have looked to crawfish as an accessory crop that can be integrated into their existing farming operations.
 
Supplies of crawfish in a typical year depend to a great extent on crawfish life history (growth through the winter and spring months), seasonal demand and a feedback mechanism based on market prices. When prices drop too far, harvesting becomes uneconomical and crawfish are left in the ponds until prices improve or draining must take place. This situation can be further exacerbated when abundant wild-crop crawfish harvests saturate market channels. Many industry observers feel that if crawfish acreage expands significantly over the next several years, an unavoidable consequence will be lower prices for the industry as a whole.

For more information on crawfish production and harvesting, see the Crawfish Production Manual, Louisiana State University. For more information on crawfish production costs, see the Projected Costs and Returns for Crawfish Production in Louisiana - 2010, Louisiana State University.

Competitiveness
Louisiana crawfish farmers face competitive pressures on a number of levels. Perhaps the most direct competition comes from occasional abundance of wild-harvested crawfish. And, in national and international markets, Louisiana crawfish have not been able to compete with Chinese product on a price basis in recent years. These factors have combined to limit market opportunities largely to traditional consumers of whole crawfish, within traditional areas of market recognition.

Value-added Products
The two primary sales outlets for pond-raised crawfish are the bait market and the food market. Many fishermen prefer crawfish as a bait because they are readily taken by bass, sunfish and catfish. Small crawfish (less than 1/4 ounce) are the preferred size for sunfish and bass bait while catfish fishermen use crawfish up to 1/2 ounce.

Food crawfish producers have a variety of market options. Most of the crawfish produced in the southern United States is sold to large processors. These processors "peel" the crawfish and extract the tail meat. This meat is then frozen and sold through supermarkets or restaurants in one-pound packages. Tail meat is used in many local food dishes, including gumbo, etouffe and jambalaya. Crawfish is also marketed and sold as live product.

The crawfish industry generates millions of pounds of peeling waste annually along with edible meat. This peeling waste has a low economic value, although it contains highly valuable orange-red pigment and the biopolymer, chitosan. Crawfish shell material is a comparatively inexpensive source of chitosan, which is a potential weight-reduction food supplement with 75 percent fat-binding capacity.

Crawfish grading processes result in more than 20 million pounds of undersized crawfish annually. These crawfish are too small for manual peeling, and most are priced below the current market, returned to the producer or discarded by the processing plant. The same study identified potential markets for crawfish mince-based products and the product attributes needed for the products’ acceptance in these markets. The study also indicated that seafood restaurants are the potential markets for crawfish mince and mince freshness is the most critical attribute affecting end-product quality and purchase intent. Minced crawfish meat from undersized crawfish has been successfully used as a base for several new seafood products, such as nuggets, patties and sausages.

Exports and Imports
U.S. crawfish exports have yet to recover from the 2005 hurricanes. Crawfish exports totaled $780,000 in 2004 but plummeted to $37,000 the following year. In 2009 exports totaled $224,000, with China and Mexico being the primary buyers.  (FAS 2009, NOAA 2009)

The United States imported crawfish meat valued at $71.9 million during 2009. China continued to be the major supplier, providing crawfish worth $62.5 million, followed by Spain, which provided $3.5 million of crawfish.  (FAS 2009, NOAA 2009)
 
Concentration Within the Supply Chain
Although prices are very uniform among buyers from day to day or week to week during a typical crawfish season, no single buyer or group of buyers can be considered as exerting excessive control over prices. No single buyer or seller of crawfish could be considered to control more than five percent of the market on any given day, but on a local level, brokers and processors can exert concentration advantages. Certain buyers occasionally offer premiums for their larger, more loyal or more consistent suppliers, which in most instances are crawfish growers rather than fishermen. 
 


Sources
Annual Commercial Landing Statistics, Fisheries Statistics, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), 2008.

Census of Aquaculture (2005), USDA, 2006.

Crawfish, Imports and Exports of Fishery Products, Annual Summary, Office of Science and Technology, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2009.

Crawfish, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center.

Global Agricultural Trade System (GATS), Foreign Ag Service (FAS), USDA, 2010.

Louisiana Crawfish Production Manual, Louisiana State University (LSU)  Agricultural Center, 2007.

Louisiana Summary, Agricultural and Natural Resources, LSU Ag Center, 2010. 

Projected Costs and Returns for Crawfish Production in Louisiana, LSU Ag Center, 2010 - This report presents estimates of projected costs for crawfish production in Louisiana for 2010.

A real crawfish boil: Farmers allege price-fixing, Wild Catch - Wild News Archive, 2008.

 
Links checked June 2011.