Today marks the first Friday of the Lenten season and here in Louisiana, Lent means crawfish…. lots and lots of crawfish.
This year’s crawfish crop in Louisiana is bountiful, “The crawfish crop that we have right now is the result of everything that has happened over the last ten months or so,” said Greg Lutz, Professor at the LSU AgCenter’s Aquaculture Research Station. “In a nutshell, it is pretty good. Everything has gone the right way, we had good summer rains, we had good rainfall in the autumn months, and as a result of that there were lots of baby crawfish going into the ponds this year.”
Lutz says over the last 25 years farm-raised crawfish have taken over as much as 90% of the crawfish marketplace. “It goes back to the same situation where the amount of crawfish we have available depends on conditions that have happened over the last year or two.”
So far, the price of crawfish is averaging about $3.49 per pound.