Domestic catfish production took another precipitous drop this summer due to mounting production costs and other economic pressures. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, only 192.5 million pounds (round weight) had been processed through July, down 31 percent from the previous year’s seven-month total.
Limited supply has driven up the price of fish paid to farmers from 78 cents a pound in the summer of 2010 to USD 1.25 a pound this year. The wholesale ripple effect is obvious.
In mid-September, the price gap between domestic catfish and pangasius from Vietnam widened even further. Fresh, boneless and skinless catfish fillets were priced in the mid-USD 4 range for all sizes, with frozen product not far behind in the low- to mid-USD 4 range; the price for fresh fillets was about USD 3 in September 2010, and in the mid-USD 2 range for frozen fillets. Frozen swai fillets are hovering at about USD 2 a pound, up from about USD 1.80 last year, but that could increase again in the near future as Vietnam, which exported USD 1.43 billion of the fish in 2010, grapples with its own production issues.
Under pressure to keep prices down, Vietnamese exporters are turning away orders from price-conscious European buyers, saying they have no fish to sell. Some producers are not making any profit at current market levels, saying the floor was reached long ago.
The industry does not want to slow its momentum in its other key market, the United States, where pangasius is now the ninth-most popular species with American consumers, at 0.405 pounds per capita. Catfish still leads at 0.8 pounds, good enough for the No. 6 spot (see News, p. 10 for the Top 10 list). Through July, however, U.S. pangasius imports reached 97.2 million pounds, a staggering 58 percent increase from the same period last year.
