Crawfish shortage impacts Louisiana's economy

we begin with a Southern delicacy that's in high demand as always but in short supply this year it is crawfish season but you wouldn't know it the crustations are hard to find right now due to a devastating drought that's taking its hole in the bottom of line of thousands of people in Louisiana cbs's Janet Shaman goes fishing for [Music] answers those are good yeah they're awesome cracking and peeling is serious business in the South this time of year it's crawfish season the crustation that looks like a tiny Lobster and tastes like a salty combination of shrimp and crab crawfish at the cun table in Lafayette it's busier than usual pricier too astronomically much yeah so serious Cajun table is one of the few restaurants in the heart of of creel country that has crawfish Supply what's the season like this year it's very very slow start I've never seen the uh drastic decrease in crawfish like I've seen this year Sean swe is the owner of Cajun table and a lifelong crawfish farmer learning from his dad on these 350 Acres of crawfish farm harvesting his own Fields is the only reason he has crawfish but not nearly enough when you're out on the boat how many sacks are you bringing in now compared to normal this time of year what we bringing in now is about seven to eight sacks and we're running 4,000 cages so what we normally would be bringing in right now is at least 30 to 40 sacks swe says that's less than 20% of his normal Hall you can pick out the old bait look okay that throw that in the water he took us out on his boat to see what that looks like normally these cages hold dozens of crawfish but today there are only a handful he rebates the cage hoping for better luck on the next pass what's causing this so we had an extreme drought and heat during the summer pretty much a record-breaking drought one of the driest seasons on record last year means the rice fields used to Harvest crawfish didn't get enough rain weeks of triple digit heat sent the Crustaceans burrowing deeper into the mud many unable to emerge what did the Crawfish sell roughly for last summer last year this time we were selling crawfish for 275 a pound and now we're selling for $10 a pound this is the uh peeling room Scott brousard is one of the nation's largest crawfish wholesalers shipping in a normal year millions of Mudbugs how many people would normally be working in here right now in this room by itself about 150 with the support people his massive plant is at a virtual standstill delivery trucks are idle and this refrigerated room usually packed with thousands of sacks of crawfish is down to a few dozen it's going to hurt our local economy unconditionally this industry produces over $300 million a year for our local farmers and and econ here we're going to be less than 10% of that there's always a Wai in line Anthony Areno has owned Hawks crawfish for more than four decades with no crawfish nobody here empty parking lot in years past the lines to get in were legendary Hawes open only in crawfish season roughly January through June when will you open this year probably not till the end of March hopefully possibly April what is that doing doing to your business destroying it on a busy night some 400 people pack the place chowing down on 2,000 lb if I got every crawfish in the state right now it wouldn't be [Music] enough experts say hter Summers will likely continue researchers at Louisiana State University are studying the impact of climate change on crawfish production when do you think you'll really see the kind of Supply that you need I may not see the kind of Supply we need until May June until the season's over okay crawfish here we go swe says this year crawfishing feels more like a hobby than a business costs exceed the cash some C it's a lifestyle he loves and loves to share you're a good crawfish woman but love as they say doesn't pay the bills swe hopes the end of the season will hopefully this last few months will account for what we've missed out in the first few can that really happen i' I'm just remaining hopeful the rice patties were a southern staple is harvested this year not a field of dreams good one for CBS Saturday morning I'm Janet Shaman I'm proud of you thank you in Lafayette Louisiana Janet really got into it historically crawfish season is like from November to July and you see that shrink huge market for for crawfish during the month of April May late April early May and that is JazzFest and that sounds like they don't even know if they'll have enough they don't know they have everything crawfish Monica raw crawfish crawfish bread there's there's so much of that huge two week Festival that relies on crawfish so it would be really interesting to see what happens love crawfish so hope they hope things improve still is always amazing to me the effects of climate change that people don't think about oh yeah and this obviously being one that could shift an entire industry

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 119,198

Keywords: CBS Saturday Morning, CBS News, video, crawfish, Louisiana, economy, shortage, drought

Id: mBQdOMqREtE

Length: 6min 7sec (367 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024