U.S. fish farms are producing only one-quarter as many catfish this year as they did when the industry peaked in 2002, according to USDA data. The decline has been blamed on higher feed costs, a change in consumer tastes, and imports from Asia.
Catfish production is concentrated in three southern states—Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, with Mississippi the largest producer by far. Mississippi has nearly two-thirds of the surface area devoted to catfish production and nearly half of the national inventory of food-size fish. The USDA reported there were 54,700 acres of catfish ponds and an inventory of 88.5 million fish as of July 1. The acreage figure was down 4 percent and the food-size inventory was down 13 percent from the previous July 1.
The industry peaked in 2002, when catfish farming was a sizable industry in four states — Louisiana no longer is part of USDA’s report on major producers — with 386 million food-size fish on hand on July 1 and 184,900 acres of ponds. The fish inventory was up 4 percent from July 2001 but pond area was down 3 percent. The USDA said there were 880 catfish operators in the four states in July 2002. The number shrank to 389 operators in three states in July 2011. The USDA no longer lists the number of operators.
In a 2014 report, Auburn University economist Terry Hanson said catfish, the sixth-most-consumed fish by Americans in 2009, had sunk to ninth. Meanwhile, imports of frozen catfish fillets were up.