By Joanna Brown
NOLA.com
This time last year, the effects of south Louisiana's extended summer drought spelled bad news for area crawfish farmers.
It costs a lot of money to pump water into dry fields, and many crawfish and their hatchlings didn't make it through the abnormally hot and dry conditions of 2023. At the start of the 2024 crawfish season, these poor conditions were reflected in the price and availability of one of the region's most anticipated products.