Crawfish harvest limited

• By RICHARD BURGESS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Mar 5, 2008 - Page: 1BA

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RAYNE — A group of crawfish farmers agreed Tuesday to stop harvesting two days a week in an effort to tighten supplies in the face of falling wholesale prices.

The move comes after crawfish farmers have seen the wholesale price per pound fall from $2.50 to $1 in the past four weeks, said David Savoy, president of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association.

Savoy, who farms 1,700 acres of crawfish ponds near Church Point, said the $1-per-pound wholesale price is just enough to cover production expenses, which have risen sharply with the price of fuel and migrant labor.

“We are pushed to the point of breaking even, and nobody works to break even,” he said.

In a long and often-contentious meeting Tuesday evening at the Rayne Civic Center, members of the farmers association alleged that major wholesalers seem to have been agreeing to cut prices over the past month.

“New Orleans to Lake Charles to Shreveport to Houston to Mobile — all have the same price change to the farmer on the same morning at the same time,” Crawfish Farmers Association Director Stephen Minvielle said.

What’s more, he said, the recent price drops have not translated into significant reductions in consumer prices at restaurants and seafood stores.

It is uncertain what effect the agreement Tuesday will have on the crawfish market.

The Crawfish Farmers Association has about 1,100 members, which is the majority of the roughly 1,600 crawfish farmers in the state, Minvielle said.

Of those numbers, about 140 farmers were at the Tuesday meeting.

The decision to suspend harvest for two days passed by a voice vote, but it was not an overwhelming majority and the suspension is voluntary.

“It’s going to be voluntary unless I follow you around with a baseball bat,” Minvielle said.

Some members made clear they did not plan to go along, either because they did not think it would work or because some farmers would likely break the agreement once prices inched back up.