Crawfish farmers wait for relief after one of their worst seasons
MAURICE, LA. – (KLFY) It’s been almost a month since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced $19B in relief to America’s farmers, and in Acadiana, crawfish farmers are wondering when that money will help them recover from one of the worst seasons in memory.
In Maurice, War Eagle Ranch has 110 acres for crawfish farming. Normally, it harvests about 1,000 lbs. of crawfish per acre, but this year it caught a third of that and still couldn’t sell all of them.
“Mother nature is mother nature. She gives you what she gives you,” admitted Randy Comeaux. For 27 years he’s farmed crawfish, but the 2020 season is the saddest tale he remembers.
“It was one of the worst years. Less crawfish and less chance of selling your crawfish,” Comeaux explained.
Coronavirus has closed restaurants, stopped peelers, spooked grocers, and ended crawfish boils. Now Comeaux and other farmers are waiting for something to get them out of a hole.
“In years past you could crawfish seven days a week and never come up with enough crawfish for the market, for the demand, and this year some store shut down and didn’t want to buy. Rumors went out that there was coronavirus in the crawfish,” Comeaux remarked.
That’s why when he heard about billions of federal aid heading to farmers, he wanted to know how soon the government could shell it out.
“The check in the mail is obviously always a question we expect, and I can tell you we are going to do it as quickly as possible,” explained U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in an April media call.
He said then he hopes to have checks in the hands of farmers by the end of the May.
“Frankly by the time the rule gets published, the software gets developed and everything, I’m hoping we can get checks by the end of May,” said Perdue. “Our people really wanted a longer date than that, but we’re going to push them to get these checks out in May.”
But while Comeaux has asked for updates, his opportunity to recover this season have already burrowed away.
“Seems like it’s too late for y’all though?”, News 10 asked Comeaux. “Yeah, for us it’s over,” he replied.
War Eagle Ranch’s cages are already out, and the pond is being drained. The area has been reseeded, hoping for a better year in 2021.