“Shrimp landings were the big economic driver in the region,” says Dr. Rex Caffey, associate professor and director of the Center for Natural Resource Economics & Policy in the agricultural economics and agribusiness department of Louisiana State University (LSU). “They were up about 15 percent in 2006. But that hides the fact that as much as 50 percent of the shrimping fleet was decimated. Louisiana has traditionally had the most fisheries in the lower 48 states. Prior to Rita and Katrina, the biggest fishing area was Cameron. It’s gone from No. 1 to the No. 50 spot.”
Last August, the Louisiana World Trade Center reported that export shipments of agricultural products through Louisiana’s lower Mississippi River ports—which account for more than 50 percent of U.S. grain exports—increased 8.7 percent in value to $4.1 billion in the first half of 2006, over the same period a year ago. But those products were not exclusively from the Gulf region. “Also, you need to differentiate between volume and value,” says Caffey. “Half a billion dollars [were] lost on fisheries alone, just on dock side. Ripple that out through the economy. It has a huge effect.”
The quick-serve industry is feeling the effects of those aquacultural losses directly. Take, for example, the harvesting of a tiny fish called menhaden. Nearly four billion menhaden are caught each year, and about 15 percent of the catch supplies fishmeal for poultry and livestock feeds. With the losses in fisheries on the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf coasts, the costs of commercial poultry production have increased. “Every restaurant chain that serves chicken is going to feel that,” says Caffey.
Inland, where immense flooding from Hurricane Rita in particular dumped ocean water, the sugar and molasses crops suffered $286,543,726 in damages. The impacts on livestock and forage totaled $75,580,644, including $2,659,982 in poultry damages, $44,539,057 in cattle, and $1,244,252 in dairy alone.
The storm surge with Rita brought ocean waters 12 to 15 miles inland, where the salts were deposited into the fields and grazing lands. “It would have taken a rain of biblical proportions to wash that salt away,” says Billy Jacob. But no rains came—instead, the region experienced a lasting drought, leaving the salts. The problems piled up: After the hurricanes, shortages of diesel fuel prevented farmers from using their generators, which could have powered their irrigation pumps. And ocean salts in some of the irrigation waters ruined fields where salt levels had been mitigated.
Rice took more than $12 million in combined losses when the storms caused flooding and wind damage to the second crop of rice. In North Louisiana, the remaining first crop was damaged badly. (Not included in the total is the amount of rice lost in storage bins that were flooded.) This year, many farmers planted no rice, or planted only a portion of their acreage. Jacob recalls how last year on Good Friday his son visited the farm of a prominent rice family in Esther, Louisiana, in the Vermillion Parish. “It looked like the Sahara desert, and it used to be green,” says Jacob. “The ground was literally cracked and parched.”
“Take Southwest Louisiana, from Vermillion Parish west,” says Jacob. “Those areas of the ‘Prairie Cajuns’ had tens of thousands of cattle killed. There’s an entire culture around the cattle industry that’s gone, and an entire way of life and French language wiped out and gone, never to come back. I hope I’m wrong.”
But the experts don’t sound more optimistic. “The loss rates are higher than the numbers show,” says Caffey. “The individual tragedies are not being told.”
To judge by the numbers, the individual and aggregate losses seem nearly insurmountable, at least in the short term. Yet recovery programs are making headway, and from the point of view of the consumer—especially for restaurant goers and tourists in cities like New Orleans—the restaurant industry seems largely to have recovered. “The crawfish have been great, actually,” says Tad Bartlett, a New Orleans attorney. Local restaurant critic Tom Fitzmorris declares the ample availability of local ingredients a “pleasant surprise.” The seafoods have been plentiful, he posted on his site nomenu.com, and oysters have recovered far more quickly than predicted.