USDA Assistance for Crawfish Big Win For Louisiana Farm Bureau

By Andy Brown

Louisiana Farm Bureau

Please see the attached announcement from USDA-FSA regarding crawfish assistance through the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program (ELAP). This a huge win for Farm Bureau and should be a big relief to our crawfish farming members who are suffering one of their worst seasons in history.

The press release does a good job of explaining what is to come, but I’d like to share a few details from behind the scenes with you and to say some thank you’s and remind you of the effectiveness of your organization. 

The program formula details:

The quick explanation of the program is a producer will be able to receive assistance by taking: 

{*historical production* – 2024 production} X market year average price ($1.44) X certified crawfish acres = indemnity. Payment will be 75% of that indemnity (90% if you are historically underserved). This payment factor is standard for ELAP.

Please visit with your local FSA office AFTER TUESDAY to learn those exact figures for your farm and your parish. This is how I best understand the program to work as of today, but as you will see those fine detail are not fully public as of today until staff is trained on Tuesday 5/14.

*historical production* - we are still learning the details of what is acceptable production records. It is my understanding that if you cannot produce personal records for at least one of the last three years, your payment calculation will be based on 80% of the parish average yields that USDA has acquired. This will be the start of USDA building a crawfish production history database so future use of ELAP will have more accurate data to base county yields off of. Typical FSA privacy rules will apply.

The Background

LFBF’s Crawfish Committee has been working diligently to better ELAP since crawfish was first included in 2021. Back in the fall when concerns about drought and heat were being realized for all our crops and livestock, crawfish was no exception. At that time, we turned up our ELAP efforts trying to be prepared should the season be as bad as we potentially thought it would be. The first big win came from our Golden Plow Award winner and champion in Congress, Julia Letlow (LA-5), who introduced the Drought Assistance Improvement Act H.R. 5691, to put USDA and Congress on notice that drought had impacted all of our livestock producers and program improvements were needed. From this effort, LFBF was able to secure a meeting with USDA-FSA in October to line out the issues with ELAP and make suggestions for improvements. Both State and National FSA staff were great to work with us and hear our needs. The LSU AgCenter, like always, was also at the table alongside Farm Bureau without hesitation to be the scientific resource and local extension of what was happening throughout our crawfish producing parishes. 

As we got into crawfish season, things became evident for our southernmost producers that things were going to be worse than they even realized. By that time, saltwater intrusion, lack of surface water, and high mortality rates meant very little to no catch for those who typically begin catching in December and January. This led to a trip to Washington, D.C. where we exercised out committee structure and leadership by bringing this message straight to Capitol Hill. Through a number of meetings, we were able to build a lot of momentum with folks like Reps. Clay Higgins, Troy Carter, Speaker Johnson and the whole delegation. This also was when farm bureau leaders close to Governor Landry were able to get his attention to this issue as well. From those voices, and Gov. Landry’s disaster declaration, Small Business Administration (SBA) announced loans made available to both farmers and industry. Around that same time, LFBF was able to get Senator Kennedy to deliver a bill as well to voice the need for drought to be covered in ELAP through the CRAWDAD Act (S.3836).

With all of this effort and political momentum, USDA appointed leadership in Washington was still relatively quite on the issue. That is when Congresswoman Letlow went to bat for us once again by voicing our needs and questions to Secretary Vilsack directly through a House Appropriations Ag Subcommittee Hearing. That and another meeting from volunteer leaders with DC-FSA administration finally had us at the table to deliver a lot of work by our staff, volunteers, and LSU AgCenter faculty to provide accurate, up to date, science and data driven information to give USDA the ability to say “yes” to including 2023 losses in ELAP. As you can read, they have chosen to do that primarily due to “excessive-heat.” With this being already an eligible cause of loss, we believe producers will see assistance quicker than they would have under drought. New causes of loss take time for USDA to properly administer through their government requirements, and the data showed heat was a legitimate concern in terms of our losses as well. Just last week, Congresswoman Letlow brought things home by holding USDA administrators accountable to accelerate their decisions and get our producers some help. 

As their press release states, ELAP has been improved by: updating yield and price data, allowing flexibility in inventory numbers to be submitted by the individual producer, and opening sign up immediately. Those were all due to the work of Louisiana Farm Bureau. LFBF is very appreciative of USDA, the D.C. administration, the national ELAP program manager, our State FSA Director Ron Guidry and his Farm Programs team, our FSA State Committee, and soon to be our local parish staff for all they are doing to listen, partner, think and amend rules, and accomplish their agency mission to provide public policy leadership to the Louisiana farmer.

I hope you appreciate the narrative to go along with the facts. I hope you appreciate the organization you have at your disposal that has resources and staff to work on your behalf so that you can keep farming for everyone else’s benefit. I also hope you will take this story and share it with your neighbors to ask them why they aren’t involved with Louisiana Farm Bureau.

Lastly, it does not fall short on me that crawfish farmers are not the only one suffering or that had severe reductions in yield from drought and heat in 2023. Amongst all this other work you read about today, we were able to accomplish big wins for our cattle producers earlier this year through LFP; we have been continuing to weave in Farm Bill priorities to the drafts that House and Senate Ag staffs have announced this week; and we will continue to look for way to achieve ad hoc disaster assistance for 2023, like we have been a leader in accomplishing nationally the previous 6 years in a row. There is never a guarantee for any of these wins, but I can guarantee they would not have been accomplished without you – the volunteer Farm Bureau member.