Growing catfish

NWU Radio Script

4-16-01

The saying goes "necessity is the Mother of Invention" and when farmers in the Mississippi Delta began looking at alternative crops to boost their income 25 years ago they turned to one of the most unlikely options.

Although cotton is still very important to the Delta economy and the state, catfish is quickly becoming the alternative crop of choice. Last year, Mississippi ranked first in the nation for commercial catfish production.

A.B. McCarty, a member of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation board of directors and a former president of Sunflower County Farm Bureau has farmed catfish since 1977. He moved from cotton to rice and then soybeans. Catfish was the next step.

"First, we built three ponds. My son came home from college and he wanted to go into business," McCarty said. "So we started a corporation with two other men. We dug up ground that had been in cotton, soybeans and rice and put it into catfish ponds."

Since that time the elder McCarty has sold out of the partnership, expanding into the food fish business with his son. In January 2000 his grandson took over McCarty Catfish Farms, 280 acres of food fish ponds in Sunflower County.

McCarty's grandson will reap the benefits of years of trials and errors. When they started catfish farming his grandfather had no experience. He had to listen to others and used specialists from the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service.

"All I knew was to build ponds, fill them with water, put fish in them and let them grow," McCarty told Farm Bureau News in January this year. "But we learned from our mistakes."

The family also learned various aspects of the business through participation in state and national catfish organizations and being active in those groups and on state and national Farm Bureau aquaculture committees.

Although growing catfish requires the same type of monetary expenses as growing cotton and the industry struggles with diseases, just as other commodities do, that is where the similarities end.

"We don't have to worry about rain. In cotton, unless you are totally irrigated, you can't control the weather's impact. In aquaculture you have more control," McCarty explained. "You can control the environment by paddle wheels and aerators."
Just as growing more familiar Delta crops has changed through the years, so has growing catfish. McCarty remembers having 10 full-time employees and four part-time employees. He also did his own seining (pronounced say-ning).

Now, his grandson has only one full-time employee and one day laborer. He also contracts his seining work.

Catfish farming appears destined to stay as an alternative crop in the Delta, according to the Farm Bureau article. Farm-raised catfish is Mississippi's fourth largest commodity.

Total production value in 1999 was $317 million, according to Jim Steeby, an Extension agent and aquaculture expert with the National Warmwater Aquaculture Center. Catfish production has an annual impact of over $2 billion on Mississippi's economy.

Growth can be measured just by these statistics alone. In 1980 Mississippi had just 17,000 acres of catfish ponds. In 2000, the state boasted a total of 400 catfish operations representing 111,500 water acres.

Delta catfish growers produced about 65 percent of the total process sales in the nation and consumer interest in the fresh-water fish is growing. Since 1985 U.S. per capita catfish consumption has grown from just under one-half a pound annual to a full pound with sales of nearly $592 nationwide in 1997.

But before Midwest producers begin eyeing this interesting alternative crop, they must also take climate and soils into consideration.

Heavy clay soils are needed to keep the ponds at constant levels and water temperatures need to stay between 80-90 degrees for the long growing season, which lasts 180-210 days.

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