Coronavirus impacting sales: Farmers produce fat crawfish crop, but profits stay slim
BY KEN STICKNEY, The Advocate
The coronavirus pandemic is undercutting Louisiana’s crawfish industry because of the shutdown of dine-in restaurants and a lack of backyard crawfish boils.
Crawfish producer Gerard Frey, of Acadia Parish, said this is unprecedented.
“It’s crippling right now,” Frey said. “We’ve never faced anything like it. We can only sell 10% or 15% of what we catch.”
Frey said he’s been unable to get all his workers from Mexico to fully staff his peeling operation, so he hasn’t had his processing plant running at full capacity.
“I just laid off four workers today,” he said Wednesday. “We don’t know where this is going to end. There’s no way we can cover our labor costs.”
Frey said his labor agreement with his imported labor requires him to pay at least 75% of their contracts “no matter what.”
“We’re just hoping and praying this thing is over soon,” he said.
Rice farmers have depended on crawfish to keep them afloat, Frey said, but that is gone now.
“Our crawfish season is basically over,” he said. “There’s so much fear and so much panic going on.”