re: WWL Radio Explains High Crawfish Prices

I started to post this yesterday and say they had run out of excuses (cold, hot, wet, dry, etc.) for high crawfish prices so did what everyone else does: Blame Obama!

Here is a longer version of the article linked above. LINK

It looks like the LA folks also screwed themselves by not lining up workers before a cap was reached.

quote:

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Randol said he was in Washington last week explaining to government officials that the spike in wages would hamper the industry. When he returned, he learned that the “cap” on H-2B workers had been reached while discussions had been ongoing on wages. The cap is 66,000 guest workers per year, or 33,000 permits issued twice a year. Those first permits have been issued, probably in other industries that use H-2B guest workers, likely forestry and landscaping, which hire the bulk of H-2B workers.

That means Louisiana processing plants missed their opportunity to hire a workforce for March, April and May, when crawfish is generally harvested. The second wave of 2015 guest workers won’t be available to the plants until the season is largely over.

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The article suggests this will not be much of a factor except for processed tail meat, which requires much more labor.

There may be foreign labor costs involved in harvesting for live sales, but impact on price of that labor cost should be much less.