John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s, informed that the business of catfish farming is going to die as the cost of corn and soybean feed increases unexpectedly. It is said that last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. And for next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, says Dillard, just as they use imported oil.
According to Dillard his business of catfish farming is on verge of closure and the jobs of 55 employees would be gone. He informed that corn and soybeans have nearly tripled in price in the last two years, for many reasons: harvest shortfalls, increasing demand by the Asian middle class, government mandates for corn to produce ethanol and, most recently, the flooding in the Midwest. This increase in prices is wreaking havoc on consumers and hog and chicken producers as well as cattle ranchers, all of whom depend on grain for feed, are being severely squeezed.
Feed is now more than half the total cost of raising catfish, compared with a third of the cost of beef and pork production, according to a Mississippi State analysis. That makes catfish more vulnerable. Keith King, the president of Dillard & Company, calculates that for every dollar the company spends raising its fish, it gets back only 75 cents when they go to market.
Company president Dick Stevens predicts that by the end of the year the company will have jobs for only 450, about half the number at its peak. That might not be enough to keep the plant open. He added that the industry is going to implode. He blamed the government’s ethanol mandates for making fuel compete with food for the harvest of the nation’s farmland.
