Abbeville, La. - On February 29th, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy introduced the crawfish recovery assistance from weather disasters and droughts act. The CRAWDADact would support Louisiana's crawfish jobs, providing farmers with federal aid in order to sustain their business during difficult conditions.
The bill would provide emergency livestock aid due to drought, something that is currently not in effect.
“We’ve been pushing very strongly at USDA to allow crawfish and other farm raised fish to access an emergency livestock assistance program because of drought. We have that program available to them for other weather events but drought is not an eligible cause of loss and so this not only directs the USDA to make the change but it also encourages USDA to work directly with crawfish farmers,” Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation Commodity Director Andy Brown said.
After an extreme drought last summer followed by a hard freeze in January, the crawfish season is behind when it normally should be.
This uphill battle has impacted crawfish farmers across the state including Vermilion Parish Crawfish Farmer Adlar Stelly from Stelly Farms who went to Washington with his wife to fight for assistance.
Stelly told KATC that he spent the beginning of the season pumping water but with that comes high cost.
“We realized how high the expense was for all the farmers in the area and how much this drought and freeze devastated our industry as a whole. I feel like we definitely need to get up there and get our voices heard because without any type of help, I’m not sure exactly how many farmers we're going to have left,” he said.
While the weather has put a strain on this season, he’s hopeful things will turn around.
“We’re hoping that USDA can come in and help us get the expense out of it. With the higher cost of pumping we had, the inflation that already hit, the cost of labor coming in and not being really able to use them. We're hopeful to gain back our expenses,” he said.
Congress still needs to review the bill.
