LITTLE ROCK — Reports on niche agriculture — including catfish farming — were cut out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget.
The catfish industry has seen its fortunes dwindle in recent years because of foreign competition and rising production costs, and the plan to ax the catfish reports was adding insult to injury.
“It’s a pretty accurate estimate on inventory, and it helps your planning and what to expect,” said Joey Lowery, who raises catfish near Newport and is a member of the state Catfish Promotions Board. “We’ve had a lot of stuff happening in the last few years.”
However, 11th-hour lobbying by the catfish industry and others got Congress’ attention.
In reaching a compromise on the national spending bill Thursday, lawmakers restored a small portion — about $9 million — that was to be cut, which would have eliminated a number of statistical reports deemed vital by many in agriculture.
Catfish producers and processors use the monthly and annual reports to capitalize on the market. But abruptly in October, the USDA announced that it would be ending those reports.
They were among 14 reports the USDA’s National Agriculture Statistics Service said it needed to trim or eliminate to save $10 million for fiscal 2012.
Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Jonesboro, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said the spending bill now will include enough money to continue reports on catfish.
“I’ll remain engaged with [the National Agriculture Statistics Survey] and press them to continue these vital industry reports” in the future, Crawford said in a prepared statement Thursday.
The measure approved by both houses of Congress added about $9.1 million to the proposed House budget and about $6 million to the proposed Senate budget for the USDA.
Every member of the Arkansas delegation voted for the spending bill.
Mike McCall, editor of The Catfish Journal, a publication affiliated with the Catfish Farmers of America, the largest industry trade organization, said that the funding needed to be restored.
“Without [the report] it would put us and our customers in the dark,” McCall said. “Not having the report will affect us more than any commodity group.”
Beyond the catfish reports, others that were on the chopping block included those for:
Sheep and goats;
Bees and honey (annual);
Mink (annual);
Nurseries.
The catfish industry has a bigger economic impact than other nitch industries in the region, employing 13,500 people in the top three states (Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama), said Carole Engle, director of the Aquaculture/Fisheries Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
“The [catfish] industry is more important, more widespread, includes more people and has a larger economic impact” she said, adding that not having the information would be “devastating.”
A spokesman for the USDA National Agriculture Statistics Survey, Sue DuPont, said the cuts were made based on the importance of the reports to the affected industry.
“The lens that we looked through to evaluate the programs was to determine if they were principal economic indicators, whether the data directly [affected] the market, whether that info is necessary to implement any USDA programs ... or whether there was any other publicly available source of information,” DuPont said. “These were really difficult decisions, and necessary to meet our budget projections.”
Not everyone in the industry agrees that the reports are needed.
According to Irvin Holdeman, owner of Delta Supreme Fish Processors in Dumas, the reports don’t have any value.
“We never really used it,” he said. “If they, every processor, gave all of their information, that would be different. But they don’t. So it’s a false report in that sense.”
He said that a couple of years ago, a report indicated that the supply would be low, prompting increased purchases by the bigger processors such as Heartland Catfish and America’s Catch, both in Mississippi.
“Processors looking at that report bought up all the fish they possibly could so they could be the last one standing, but we couldn’t afford to do that so we just kept processing,” Holdeman said. “I called around to farmers and found plenty that had fish nearly ready for market, not quite but it was close. They [the reports] said there would be no fish, but come spring there was fish.”
In recent years, like many catfish farmers, Lowery had taken several ponds out of production as the costs kept going up but the price paid by processors wasn’t keeping pace.
Since 2001, Arkansas catfish farmers have taken 26,300 acres of catfish ponds out of production as the price of feed and other costs cut into profits, according to yearly USDA catfish production reports. The decline represents 71 percent of the industry in the state.
Mississippi, the top catfish producing and processing state, had 113,500 acres devoted to catfish in 2001 and now has 51,700 acres. In 2009, the USDA stopped counting in Louisiana after its total fell below 5,000 acres.
Alabama, which hasn’t shed as many acres as other states, is down to 19,000 this year from 26,000 in 2001. Engle has said that Alabama farmers have fewer options than Arkansas and Mississippi farmers, who can take catfish acres out of production and start growing more-lucrative row crops such as soybeans and corn.
If those catfish reports had been eliminated, Engle said, it could have hurt any possibility of a comeback as prices have stabilized.
According to USDA reports this year, prices have rallied, and Lowery began adding acreage. The average price paid to producers in October was $1.28 per pound, up about 46 cents from a year ago.
“Prices are quite high and they’ve stayed high,” Engle said. “Because of that I think the industry has hit the bottom and is coming back up. [But not if] the data underlying the industry is cut out from under them.”
Mike Freeze, who owns Keo Fish Farms, switched from catfish to bass and minnows when the price of production was more than the price paid by processors.
“Don’t think we’re not talking about adding catfish again,” he said. “Those reports are important.”
Business, Pages 77 on 11/20/2011