Fishbelt Feeds Inc.

The Big Catch

Business has been good over
the years but, more recently, catfish feed producers Fishbelt Feeds Inc. are treading water and calling out for food labeling to promote the locals. ABJ hooks the big fish at the Moorhead-based mill who tells the story as it is.

As the saying goes, sometimes you need to do it yourself to get the job done right. This is certainly the proactive stance a bunch of local producers in the Mississippi Delta took over a decade ago.

On September 1990, Fishbelt Feeds Inc., a privately-held company was established by a group of catfish producers who wanted higher quality feed. So they set out to make just that. One year after stockholders announced the construction of a $6 million state-of-the-art mill, the incorporated fish food company began pro­duction. The Moorhead, Mississippi-based mill is designed to produce 80,000 tons of feed per year, but could expand to produce upwards of 280,000 tons of feed per year. “As the year’s past, we’ve grown; about 50 percent of our vol­ume is for stockholders of the company, other half is for non-stock holders,” tells Bob Harris, general manager of Fishbelt Feeds Inc. “About 75 percent of our volume goes in the Mississippi Delta, as well as Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky,” says Harris.

Specialized in production of high quality catfish feed

And then, sometimes it is not all about the price per ton for the feed, but what you get out of the product. At the time, most specialty suppliers didn’t offer something with an added-value. Because Fishbelts Feeds Inc. was willing to make the changes in its formulation, it has seen the success it has. End-users prefer it as well because the feed produces better results on the farm, reducing costs per gain. “Part of our idea of why catfish producers prefer us over the competition is our high quality formulation, or the way we pro­cess grain feeds prior to and during cooking time,” explains Harris. Simply put, the easily digestible feed gives a value-added product to the consumer. “We haven’t always been the cheapest feed out there, but it is the highest quality to the catfish industry,” says Harris. When asked if there’s a special ingredient, he won’t shy away from listing them off one by one: soybean meal, corn, wheat middlings, cottonseed meal, fish oil, as well as a blend of pork, meat bone meal, pork blood and phosphorus. “And that’s catfish feed,” he tells.

Processing hurdles

These days, the privately owned catfish feed company is struggling to be the biggest fish in the pond. There are a number of concerns generally.the tough economy poses as an immediate hurdle. “We’re in survival mode, looking for ways to cut costs and still be able to provide quality products,” says Harris. “But we won’t need processing in place for our fish, or any livestock for that matter. If we don’t have produc­ers, we won’t have a process in place for other fish, or cattle,” tells Harris. It wasn’t always that way.

In fact, the industry was growing almost 15 percent per year when Fishbelt Feeds Inc. first began. Producers say they realized that there was an oversupply of fish, but even still, the industry stabilized as growth slowed down at that point. “Our first seventeen years were consecutive record-breaking years. We grew from 35,000 tons to 208,000.a 496 percent growth. We never had to look back,” he says. Starting last year, volumes shrunk significantly. “When we entered this industry more than a decade ago, there was about a million tons of catfish feed sold in the industry. This year, I predict it would be around 493,000 tons. That’s a contraction of growth at about 50 percent this decade alone,” he says.

Lackluster regulation

Fish volumes haven’t suffered as severely as the industry has. However, the increasing number of imports is harming local producers. “Retailers started importing catfish from China and Vietnam, which put a burden us,” says Harris. But it doesn’t stop there. He says tilapia also poses a big com­petition to farm-raised, grain-feed catfish. Fish feed prices have escaladed recently due to the rise in biodiesel, and some grout problems that affected bean plants in South American last year. “For the past 20 years, our costs have been around $235 to $250 a ton for feed, and that has grown to over $350 to $400 a ton,” tells Harris, adding imported fish has grown to 66 million pounds from six years ago, to 1.4 billion pounds today.

Another indirect issue affecting the catfish feed company is fish labeling regulations, or lack thereof. “We need extended Country of Origin labeling. Right now, American producers are under more stringent guidelines for any livestock, not just catfish. In the far-east, foreign producers are feeding chemicals and drugs that are carcino­gens and illegal antibiotics in the U.S.,” tells Harris. “The fish grown in Vietnam are grown in cages in the Mekong River, so when you see some in the seafood section on display for $6 a pound and another for $4.50 a pound, which one are you going to buy?” he asks. Fishbelt Feeds Inc., hopes you choose U.S. farm-raised, grain-fed catfish.

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