High demand, low supply for crawfish during Easter weekend

Sydney Simone
·1 min read

BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – As we head into Easter weekend, crawfish sellers are warning customers about the ongoing crawfish crisis.

If your family plans to host a crawfish boil, sellers said you may want to have a backup plan. Restaurant owners said they don’t have much on hand and if they do, it’s going to cost you.

“What better way to hang out with family than to boil crawfish?,” Elvondae Raybon, Owner of Pit-N-Peel said.

Many Louisiana families hope to celebrate Lent, Easter and other religious holidays with seafood.

“This weekend is a tribute to all the things that we in Louisiana take for granted as a culture. You know, as other states are taking it as a delicacy,” said Raybon.

The problem is crawfish is being produced, but the numbers are less than half which is causing prices to skyrocket.

Louisiana crawfish prices go up half a dollar per pound just ahead of Easter weekend

“The farmers are working diligently to try to meet the demands but it’s just not available,” said Raybon. “Normally today I would have over 100 to 150 sacks of crawfish and I got six.”

When asked if he sees things getting better anytime soon, Raybon said, “I mean, my fear is that next year is not going to be better. You know so, this season was greatly affected by the drought but we haven’t seen much rain since December.”

Along with the drought in August 2023, some believe fishermen are overfishing this year. This could also cause problems later.

Raybon said his live crawfish starts at $5.50 per pound. His boiled crawfish starts at $6.99.

“It’s more than double right now based on the market,” said Raybon.

Pit-N-Peel’s location is at 2101 Government St.

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