Urban Raised Crawfish
Louisiana is the nation’s No. 1 crawfish producing and consuming state. The vast majority of our marketable crustaceans are farmed and have a value of roughly $112 million per year. As a recent demonstration project illustrates, some of that production might move as close as the back yard.
“It’s the equivalent of a home vegetable garden – you’re not going to get rich off of a home vegetable garden, but you can augment the fresh food coming into the house,” explained Rusty Gaude’, marine Extension agent with Louisiana Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter for Jefferson, Orleans, St. Charles and St. John parishes.
Gaude’ was referring to a crawfish pond, covering roughly one-eighth of an acre in Violet, that he helped conceive and build for AgMagic Orleans earlier this year. The plot contains both a small rice crop and crawfish, and was constructed to demonstrate the detail and mechanics of polyculture to school children and their teachers. AgMagic has been held annually in Baton Rouge for 10 years as a way to show young people where their food comes from and to provide hands-on lessons about many types of agriculture. This year, the show went on the road to Docville Farms, which is operated by the Meraux Foundation on the Mississippi River in St. Bernard parish.
While rice and crawfish have been produced together commercially since the 1950s, Gaude’ said home-grown crawfish could be a reality for area residents. Rice and crawfish have complementary harvest cycles. Rice is planted in March or April. As the plants mature in ponds filled with a few inches of water, they create cover for the crawfish. When the weather heats up during the summer, crawfish dig and retreat to burrows. The ponds are drained in late July, and the rice crop is harvested while the crawfish are safe underground. Fields are re-flooded in late September when the crawfish reproduce. Rice plant residue provides critical forage for the re-emergent crawfish, which grow to marketable size in about three months and are captured in pyramid-shaped traps. Then the cycle begins anew.
“The concept for this demonstration crawfish pond came from the AgMagic preliminary meetings when we were brainstorming on how to get these different components of Louisiana agriculture in place as an active, growing demonstration,” Gaude’ said. “In Plaquemines Parish in southeast Louisiana, the production of commercial-sized crawfish is a viable option. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crawfish operations here and in the number of acres that are devoted to crawfish. This is a small plot to show that this is perfectly doable here in St. Bernard Parish or Plaquemines Parish, or any of the southeast Louisiana parishes because we have the climate. We have the water, and we certainly have the market. The New Orleans area is the biggest crawfish market for the state of Louisiana.”
While Gaude’ believes there are opportunities to expand commercial crawfish production, he would also encourage homeowners to install small ponds like the one at Docville that require little space, can be filled with a garden hose, and are maintained with relative ease.
“There are many people who have land,” said Gaude’, who served as an assistant professor and the director of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Crawfish Research Center during 1980s. “Once you set it up, the production is basically perpetual as long as you keep up the management of it. And it (the plant material) doesn’t have to be rice. You can raise crawfish over volunteer weeds. Rice is good forage, however, and your production might be lower if you use something other than rice.”
Gaude planted the Docville pond with Catahoula rice, which he said is grown throughout Louisiana and in other states and is widely available at feed stores. He then introduced two sacks of crawfish from the LSU Ben Hur Aquaculture Station. Though there are more than 20 species of crawfish in Louisiana, Gaude’ used the two that dominate the culinary trade – the red swamp (Procambarus clarkii) and white river (Procambarus zonangulus) varieties. Gaude’ said the small demonstration pond should produce about 100 pounds of crawfish annually. While the rice is edible, hulling it requires machinery that makes home production impracticable.
“A family of four could basically get two or three good feedings of crawfish off this plot,” he said. “The children could run the traps in the afternoon, and then the parents could boil the crawfish up for the family to eat,” Gaude’ said.
Twyla Herrington is an associate area marine Extension agent for Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes with Louisiana Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter who is also working with area crawfish farmers. “Urban crawfish farming is an opportunity to involve the whole family in a Louisiana tradition, literally in your backyard,” she said.
Stella Plantation, the LSU Rice Station at Crowley and Maurice Wolcott with Louisiana Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter also provided assistance with the project.