$462 million dollar industry decimated by biofuels; 10,000 jobs lost.

[NNadir]

LELAND, Miss. — Catfish farmers across the South, unable to cope with the soaring cost of corn and soybean feed, are draining their ponds.


The Food Chain
Eating Up the Profits
Articles in this series are examining growing demands on, and changes in, the world’s production of food.


High Feed Costs Strain Catfish Market “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.”

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...

...Perhaps nowhere has the rise in crop prices caused more convulsions than in the Mississippi Delta, the hub of the nation’s catfish industry. This is a hard-luck, poverty-plagued region, and raising catfish in artificial ponds was one of the few mainstays.

Then the economics went awry. 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. But if the commodities continue to rocket up — and some analysts believe they will — other industries will fall victim as well...

...Other farmers had the same idea. At first the ponds were put on soil too dry for cotton. When they proved a better crop, they took over cotton ground, too. For a long time, everyone made money.

In 2005, according to the Agriculture Department, catfish farming was a $462 million industry, far exceeding any other American farm-raised fish. The industry employed more than 10,000 people at its peak, almost all in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/business/18catfish.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

[bananas]

1. Did you notice that Al Gore didn't mention nuclear in his speech today?

[TheWraith]

2. Al's not always right. nt

[NNadir]

3. Did you notice that this thread has nothing to do with Gore?

We see that your reading comprehension is rather consistent.

I know that you don't have a clue about thinking, especially independently, but I couldn't care less about what Al Gore thinks about catfish farming.

[jpak]

5. Did you read the article? - apparently not

Your reading comprehension is minimal at best....

:rofl:

[phantom power]

7. I read the article...

Not once were the phrases "Al Gore" or "nuclear energy" mentioned. In fact, I read it twice, just to try and figure out what it was I was supposed to be missing.

[jpak]

4. Gee - were biofuels responsible for increased corn and soy demand in E. and S. Asia??

Were they responsible for record high fertilizer prices???

Were they responsible for record high diesel prices and transport costs??

Were they responsible for recent record flooding in the Corn Belt????

Only in the suckfuck world of anti-renewable energy farm economics...

from the OP...

<snip>

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.

<snip>

[depakid]

6. Even so, the point is valid

allocating corn for fuel will increase prices and have effects on other industries and ecosystems (along with unintended consequences).

I'm curious about why catfish even need to eat high quality grains like corn. I'm guessing that it's necessary for a commercially viable growth rate, but given the what I've seen of catfish, they're not too particular about what they'll eat.

[izquierdista]

9. They don't need to, they can eat shit.

They are the consummate bottom feeders, eating the shit that other fish drop on the bottom. If that grosses you out, then you don't want to inquire about the feeding habits of lobster and crabs either.

The only reason these good old boys are shutting down the pond is that they are too damn lazy to scrounge up some feed for their fish. Used poultry litter, animal carcasses from the veterinarian, anything that has "by-product" tagged on the back of it, etc. There is a pig farm in North Las Vegas where the pigs are fed on all the waste that comes off the buffets on the Strip. Now, that guy understands recycling and how to make a buck feeding your animals what's available locally! It's not like anyone is going to be growing a bumper crop of corn and beans in the Las Vegas valley. With casinos all over the place now, I would bet that some of these catfish farms could find one within reasonable distance and find a source for some cheap, good quality feed.

[madokie]

10. That would depend on what type catfish you're talking about

as a flathead catfish for the most part only eats live whatever it eats which is mostly other fish smaller than itself. but it will dine on frogs and snakes too. As long as its alive that is.

[NNadir]

11. Answers to your questions, not that they're anything more than the usual denial

Question 1:

Yes. Very much so. For the last 100 years, fertilizers have all been manufactured from dangerous fossil fuels, about which the anti-nuke community couldn't care less.

The biofuels industry has lead to the increased use of dangerous fossil fuels for fertilizer manufacture.

Question 2: Yes. Very much so. For many years denialists have been running around claiming that biofuels could save the car cults. On this website alone there have been many thousands of threads claiming as much. This attitude of denial has lead to complacency, meaning that nothing was done because people wallowed in dopey wishful thinking year after year after year after year instead of facing reality.

Question 3: Yes. Very much so. It was reported several years ago that the world Meteorological Society issued a warning, unprecedented, that climate was becoming increasingly erratic owing to climate change. One major cause of climate change is the car culture, which has been propped up by wishful thinking on the part of the "biofuels will save us" cult. The car culture should have been abandoned many years ago, but that would not have served the purposes of the ethanol lobby, and similar lobbies of dangerous fossil fuel apologists.

The fact is that the "renewables will save us" cults have specifically avoided the fact that renewable energy is unreliable. There are zero fundie anti-nuke dangerous fossil fuel "renewables will save us" cultists on this website who have ever represented through prediction that renewable energy depends on the weather. This by the way goes for wind power.

I note with contempt that if the world were depending on the much HYPED wind power scheme and a case of doldrums lasting six months struck North America, we'd be met with "that's not my fault" while people lived in darkness.

Tough shit fundie. Biofuels are proving to be a disaster, and part of the reason is that like all dopey "renewables will save us" fantasies, they depend on the weather, precisely at the time that the weather is becoming destabilized because of anti-nuke ignorance.

Speaking of doldrums though, how's the scale up of that wind/hydrogen scheme on Utsira going? You were here for the last 6 years telling us all about how we were saved because of those ten houses.

Last I heard, funding was running out for the ten houses in March of 2008. Where are the exajoule scale hydrogen plants? How many hydrogen HYPErcars are running in Norway? California? Iowa? Louisiana?

Heckuva job, fundie, heckuva job.

I'm sure that the poor really admire your contempt for them, but as we know, I have tried to return the contempt to you and am proud of my effort to do so.

[Fledermaus]

8. The article clearly states..."many reasons" for job losses, not just one