After months of lobbying the crawfish industry will be included in the federal Coronavirus Food Assistance Program aimed at helping food producers impacted by the pandemic.
Congressman Ralph Abraham made the announcement. He says crawfishermen were slammed by having the pandemic shut the country down during their peak spring season.
“These crawfish farmers are losing a dollar a pound and their loss was estimated to be at around 150 million dollars just in 2020,” says Abraham.
When the program was first announced in April crawfishermen incensed that they weren’t included like other seafood industries. Abraham says the LSU Ag Center and Louisiana Farm Bureau went to work fixing that.
“The data was just not in place to be able to push this industry in the direction of CFAP,” says Abraham.
Abraham says if you’re a crawfisherman the relief is just straight cash in your pockets if you qualify but you need to apply for the aid by the September 11th deadline.
“They can go to their local FSA office or they can go to www.farmers.gov/cfap,” says Abraham.