Despite Being Third-largest Producer, Catfish Processing has Dried Up in Arkansas

With six locations across Arkansas, Eat My Catfish could be considered a homegrown success story, having started as a Benton food truck in 2008. Owner Travis Hester said the reason for the chain’s popularity is its focus on fresh, U.S. farm-raised catfish, something that meets consumer appetites for natural, high-quality food produced locally.

Travis Hester
(Photos courtesy of Eat My Catfish)

With Arkansas being the third-largest producer of catfish in the United States and, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the birthplace of catfish farming, one might imagine most of the fish he serves were raised in the state. Think again.

“We actually don’t buy any Arkansas catfish, and here’s why: Farmers depend on processors, so if you’re a farmer, you have ponds, you grow catfish, you’ve got to get that catfish out and take it somewhere to actually be processed,” he said. “There’s not a facility in the state of Arkansas that does that.”

(Photo courtesy of Eat My Catfish)

Jeremy Robbins, president of The Catfish Institute, said the last Arkansas processor he knew of closed in 2015. Although he described the industry as stable today, he said there was a steady period of decline following 2001 that caused consolidation in both production and processing.

Jeremy Robbins
(Photo courtesy of The Catfish Institute)

“Arkansas in 2001 had 31,000 acres of water raising U.S. catfish,” he said. “Today, they only have 3,200 acres of water, so only 10 percent of what they were. As there were fewer farms in Arkansas and more farms in Mississippi and Alabama, you saw a shift in that as the industry consolidated eastward a little bit, so did the processing.”

Since Arkansas catfish farmers ship their product to processors in states such as Mississippi, the nation’s largest catfish producer, it is likely some catfish purchased from those processors were raised in Arkansas. However, there was no way for restaurant owners to guarantee they were serving Arkansas catfish until very recently.

In 2023, two of the state’s largest catfish producers, Brad Graham and Greg Moyers, teamed up with Mississippi catfish farmer Shorty Jones to purchase Freshwater Farms in Belzoni, Mississippi, through which the partners are working to market catfish with the Arkansas Grown label.

Brad Graham

“I think the more local you can be, the more excitement you get out of it,” Graham said. “U.S. farm-raised fish means a lot to certain people. They want a domestic product. Arkansas farm-raised fish will mean a lot to Arkansans, just as Mississippi farm-raised fish means something to Mississippi, and Texas, they have Texas Grown.”

He added that even when there were processors in Arkansas, producers shipped their product to both in-state and out-of-state processors. He said he and Jones had been looking for ways to get into processing for several years before the opportunity to buy Freshwater came along. While it might be possible to get a small, local processing operation up and running in Arkansas, he said opening a large-scale processor would be a challenge.

Freshwater Farms, Brad Graham, inset
(Photos courtesy of Freshwater Farms)

“I’d been looking at processing for a long time, and being the largest producer in the state, I felt like I had a pretty good grip. If I wanted to go through Arkansas Grown, I could maintain markets,” he said. “The problem is that you start having to buy those markets, and when you’re buying markets and you’re competing with a guy who has his plant paid for, and he doesn’t have the overhead expenses that you have as a beginning operation, then you’re very limited on how much you can spend on that market.”

As for what caused the dearth of Arkansas catfish processors to begin with, Robbins said cheap Asian imports were the main reason for the decline.

“Today, just for reference, the price for a pound of imported, catfish-like species such as pangasius, which is commonly marketed as basa or swai, can be purchased at a port for about $1.65 a pound, and the U.S. farm-raised catfish industry can grow and produce and market that same product for about $5 per pound, and that’s just our cost,” he said. “There’s no way we can compete with that, and so we lost a lot of markets because of that.”

State and federal governments have enacted labeling laws to fight back against the copycats. Congress added a retail-level country-of-origin-labeling requirement for catfish to the Farm Bill in 2002, The National Agricultural Law Center states, and Arkansas requires all catfish products to be labeled as farm-raised, river or lake, imported, or ocean catfish.

“The more that we can tell consumers about the origin of the food, the better,” Robbins said. “We’re seeing not only our own country-of-origin-labeling laws for catfish but also seafood labeling laws for all seafood. Individual states have decided enough is enough. There’s too much deception in the marketplace. People want to eat local seafood, but they’re unable to because you can’t tell the difference, and I think that is just a huge win for consumers.”

While the tariffs championed by President Donald Trump are designed to protect U.S. markets from foreign imports, Robbins said the tariffs are not drastic enough to overcome such vast pricing disparities between domestic and imported seafood.

“It would take a 200-percent tariff to really help level the playing field between U.S. catfish and imported pangasius,” he said.

Foreign competitors snatching up markets is not the only concern, however; catfish farmers must also contend with predatory birds snatching up their fish. Robbins said migratory birds such as double-crested cormorants and white pelicans, both protected by federal law, are a major hindrance for farmers.

“If you spend any time in southeast Arkansas, you’ll see both of those by the thousands,” he said. “They will come in and completely empty a farmer’s pond from having catfish. We see it time and time again.”

Some recent legislation passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will provide federal funds to help offset the cost of managing the birds, he added. Graham said the assistance is sorely needed.

“We constantly have guys trying to scare birds off. We’re putting strings up. We’re doing everything we can, taking measures to get rid of the birds just through scare tactics, and it takes a lot. It takes a lot of labor,” he said. “Every one of [the workers] has got to have a pickup truck. Every one of them burns a tank of gas every day, and they get a check every week. We’re limited on what we can do to control the birds, and we need help with that. They’re a huge impact on our bottom line, on our operations.”

At the same time, catfish farmers are battling similar challenges as other producers. Robbins said rising input costs are making it harder for farmers to continue farming, while Graham said he has a problem finding dependable labor. However, catfish producers are also benefitting from increased efficiency.

“Although our acreage is down, our production is solid and steady, and we see no reason to believe that that would change in the coming years,” Robbins said.

He noted that while the U.S. catfish industry has shrunk to about a third of the acreage it claimed in 2001, the amount of fish processed is down only half thanks to advances in farming techniques.

Graham said one of the most dramatic changes is the use of aerators. While it used to be common to see one 10-horsepower aerator on a 10-acre pond, 10 horsepower per acre is now the standard to ensure fish have adequate levels of oxygen, leading to healthier fish and a better feed conversion ratio, he said.

Aerators ensure better oxygen levels, making the catfish healthier.
(Photo courtesy of The Catfish Institute)

He has also seen more farms raising hybrid catfish.

“We take a channel female and a male blue, and we cross them in the hatchery,” he said. “We get a more aggressive-feeding fish, a little better feed conversion on that fish, a little more yield in that fish at the plant, a little more disease resistance, a little more tolerant to heavier stocking densities so you don’t have issues with mortalities near as bad.”

Robbins noted that vaccines have been developed to help improve fish health, as well.

“Our research partners at our land-grant universities have worked really hard to cut down on disease loss, and one of the biggest benefits of that is the advent of a vaccine that can be administered when the fish are still in the egg phase or when they’re being shipped from the hatchery to the farm,” he said. “We can actually vaccinate those fish, and they can enjoy a disease-free lifecycle, which helps the farmers make more money and grow more fish for the consumer to enjoy.”

Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture Wes Ward said increasing domestic consumption of catfish and other Arkansas products is a key area of focus for his office.

Wes Ward

“If Arkansas receives $327 million to USDA programs for food and nutrition programs, how do we make sure more of that money is spent on Arkansas products, whether that’s Arkansas rice, Arkansas catfish?” he said. “That is one of our biggest challenges and one of the biggest things we’re working on right now from a Department of Agriculture standpoint.”

He said he hopes consumer education and initiatives such as Arkansas Plate, a program launched by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to provide locally sourced meals in schools, will encourage processing to resume in the state.

“I think if we can increase that demand for those products and, in particular, Arkansas catfish, I think that would hopefully open the door for a processor or processors in Arkansas,” he said. “It’s definitely market driven, so the demand signals would have to be there, the increased production would have to be there, but I’m hopeful, with this new initiative we’ve got with Gov. Sanders, that we’ll see an increase in consumption.”

Arkansas catfish farm
(Photo courtesy of
The Catfish Institute)

Graham encouraged diners to be vocal about asking whether the catfish they are eating was raised in the United States.

“I think the customer needs to know,” he said. “Most customers don’t know. Most customers won’t ask. I go to a lot of meetings. I go to a lot of meetings in D.C. and have conversations with trade reps, with senators, congressmen, and I ask all of them, when you go sit down at a restaurant to eat catfish, how many times do you ask where the catfish comes from? Most of the time, the answer is, ‘I’ve never asked that,’ and I challenge them to do that.”

SEE THIS STORY IN OUR APRIL ISSUE OF ARKANSAS MONEY & POLITICS