| The Cameron Shrimp Summit of Sept. 16, 2009, covered the many factors leading to the current shrimp situation along with some opportunities for the future. The entire meeting or portions can be viewed at: www.seagrantfish.lsu.edu/management/shrimpsummit.htm
Louisiana shrimp landings comprised 47 percent of the Gulf of Mexico landings in 2008, worth $130 million dockside. The history, social and economic impacts of Louisiana’s shrimp industry is an important part of the state’s coastal zone. However, the industry as a whole is in dire straits. The number of shrimp harvesters and processors in Louisiana has been reduced by 50 percent in the last decade.
Although the hurricanes of 2005 had a devastating effect, the main reason for this decline is the impact of imported shrimp into the United States, which is the largest importer of shrimp in the world. The consumption of shrimp in the United States has tripled in the last 25 to 30 years, making shrimp the most popular seafood item in the U.S. However, less than 10 percent of that shrimp is domestic product. Over the years, as world shrimp production grew from 3.4 billion pounds in 1980 to more than 13 billion pounds in 2005, the economic principles of supply and demand have come in to play driving down the price of farm raised shrimp and wild caught domestic shrimp.
The recent economic downturn has contributed to the extreme shrimp price drops seen in 2009. According to the National Restaurant Association Performance Index, a sharp drop in restaurant business occurred beginning in July 2007. For most folks in the U.S., when they eat shrimp, it is at a restaurant. Since that time the U.S. economy, including restaurant indexes, have been very slow. All the while, shrimp are being imported and landed domestically. At some point, these volumes of shrimp in cold storage slow down and create a bottleneck. This reached a critical point in the summer of 2009, when shrimp prices plummeted to 65-75 cents per pound for large shrimp.
Opportunities for stabilizing and sustaining the domestic shrimp industry were covered during the meeting. The Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board is aggressively marketing Louisiana shrimp as being superior in taste and texture. Another project in the works is to build a state-of-the-art shrimp landing/processing facility in Cameron, using Louisiana Recovery Authority and private funding. The fisheries infrastructure project will employ the cold chain handling and processing technology to produce a high quality product which will demand higher market prices.
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