Despite severe economic challenges over the years, the US catfish farming industry is now advancing again thanks to new technologies and production strategies – including the use of split ponds.
Industry advocates point out that the country’s catfish farmers are now producing their fish on less land for lower costs, while also reducing environmental impacts.
Early beginnings
Many of the pioneers in US catfish farming were already aquaculture veterans, having been involved for years in pond culture of buffalo fish in Arkansas and surrounding states. By the late 1950s at least two buffalo farms in Arkansas had also started producing channel catfish. Over the following years more buffalo producers began switching to channel catfish, and interest in farming this species was widespread throughout the southern US. In 1964, Texas A&M’s Cooperative Extension Service published a bulletin by Wallace Klussmann titled Channel Catfish Farming. Over the next decade, states as far afield as Maryland and California developed their own guidance for would-be catfish producers. Today, however, over 96 percent of the US catfish industry is located in Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi – with Mississippi accounting for over half of the harvests and acreage…
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