Posted by Ed Levine, July 19, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Or, 'I Believe They're Sinking Down'
Catfish farming, which was one of the few bright spots in the Mississippi Delta economy, is grinding to a halt at an alarming pace, according to the New York Times. It is a victim of the rapid rise in feed costs; corn and soybean prices have tripled in the last two years. Catfish farmers simply cannot afford to buy food for their fish and are draining their ponds.
“It’s a dead business,” said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s. Last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, Mr. Dillard said, just as they use imported oil.
As for his 55 employees? "Those jobs are gone."
An industry that at one point provided 10,000 jobs in the hard-luck Delta region is now reduced to minnow status.
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Posted by Ed Levine, October 29, 2007 at 10:15 AM
This is what happens when you go to the Southern Foodways Alliance Conference in Oxford, Mississippi, from which I just returned. You hang out with a great bunch of people (some you know, some you don't) you listen to some smart, interesting people talk about Southern food and drink—about placing fried chicken and sausage and barbecue and collard greens in a broader cultural context.
Some of the talks are hilarious (Roy Blount, Jr. reciting his food poems, which are pure poetic genius), others are less exciting, but just about all of them make you hungry. Hungry for what, you might ask? Hungry for all the subjects I would consider majoring in if I enrolled in the Southern Foodways degree-conferring program at the University of Mississippi. I would have to triple-major in barbecue, fried chicken, and sausage biscuits, with a triple-minor in hush puppies, catfish, and boudin, all of which I consumed in ridiculous quantities this weekend.
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