Across the South, April is the middle of crawfish season. Chef Maudie Schmidt, of the longtime Fayetteville New Orleans-style restaurant Cafe Rue Orleans, says this time of year is usually full of friends, food, and fun: "Crawfish happens about March to about May, and you cram it in. And so, everybody wants to have a crawfish boil during the spring. And it's around baseball season and the weather's good. People are outside in flip flops and shorts, eating off of a table, standing up, (eating) with their hands, and having a good time. I think that's the lore. That it is only available a certain time of the year—you got to get in there and get it. And when it's gone, it's gone."
Cafe Rue Orleans has operated in Fayetteville for 23 years and has served a demand for crawfish boils to the local community for nearly as long. Maudie said, "We started boiling crawfish maybe about 15, 18 years ago because of the demand. People were like, 'Hey, do you boil crawfish?'" She remembered seeing "More people from South Louisiana come up here to work. They work for Tyson, or they work for Procter and Gamble, or they work for Walmart. And so, they were missing home. And they started asking, 'Can you get crawfish up here?' And we started bringing crawfish up and (at the restaurant) we would boil them." On her restaurant's decision to offer boiled crawfish, Maudie "would say demand is the biggest driver. We sell a lot of crawfish."
Richard McGinnis, the owner of Richard's Meat Market in Fayetteville, sells wholesale crawfish at his store. According to Richard, crawfish are a valuable extra revenue source come spring. Richard said, "We've done crawfish for quite a few years just in the spring. You know, we sell quite a few crawfish. Enough that it hurt when we didn't have them."
This year, crawfish season looks a little different. Droughts hit crawfish growing areas in Louisiana hard, even prompting Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry to issue a disaster declaration, and leaving business owners like Richard and Maudie uncertain about this typically busy season.
Maudie explained, "Just like we (in Northwest Arkansas) were really hot last summer, so was South Louisiana. And their temperatures were 100, 110. They went 42 days last summer with no rain, and that is just almost unheard of. The crawfish don't like 100-degree days, so they bury in the ground. And then, normally, it triggers them to lay eggs. And then the eggs become little baby crawfish, and then we eat them." She said last year, without any rain, that cycle was interrupted. "So, with no rain, crawfish were coming out of their holes and just going everywhere across the streets and things like that, because they couldn't get any water. They needed water. And so, a lot of them died. A lot of eggs didn't hatch. And [we're] talking millions and millions of eggs, and the time to lay the eggs was crucial."
Businesses immediately felt the cost of those lost crawfish. Maudie said, "Now, here we are, fast forward to this season. I mean, crawfish live started off at $10 a pound. Well, you've got to sell them for 20. Even my brother, who has a restaurant in New Orleans by the airport, didn't have crawfish for a while when everybody was expecting crawfish. That's unheard of."
Richard says one factor in this year's higher prices is the late harvest that came about because of the droughts. He said, "First week we got crawfish was on March the 22nd. Two years prior to that, we had crawfish the second week in February. So, it was basically six weeks late (in 2024). Those six weeks that we missed are just missed crawfish."
Increased crawfish prices mean increased costs for businesses and consumers, which has affected how Cafe Rue Orleans has approached this crawfish season. Chef Maudie, who says her restaurant will likely forego live boiled crawfish this year, has to consider all the factors increasing costs. "People are not ordering as much at the restaurant because it's expensive. You know, last year, (crawfish cost) about $40 to, maybe, $50 a sack for 30-pound sack. Do the math. This year, there were sacks that were $200. And so, there's not as many sacks of crawfish. My brother, on a weekday, boils 25 to 30 sacks a day. He's lucky this year if he gets 15—that's half. And I think for us to get crawfish in Fayetteville, it's $5 a pound live right now. You know, that's still a lot of money. Because there's an average 30-pound sack. So, what's 5 times 30? 150? That's $150 sack that last year was about $50. So, it's gone up a hundred bucks. It takes seven pounds of boiled crawfish to make one pound of tails. So, if somebody's selling them for $5 a pound, that's 35 bucks of crawfish to make one pound. And I go through about 75 pounds a week of just tails."
This year's shortage has meant uncertainty for Chef Maudie as her restaurant continues to offer crawfish tails to meet the high customer demand. According to Maudie, "It's hard, because I'm trying to weigh all the time, 'what's crawfish gonna be next week? What is crawfish going to be a month from now?'" That uncertainty won't be resolved until the end of this summer. For all the advances and shipping and harvesting, the crawfish yield is still ultimately dependent on Mother Nature. Maudie warned, "You have to just harvest when the time is ready. And we won't know about next season until we go through a summer. It's all dependent on weather—those things are weather connected so deeply."
Dr. Elvis Elli is a researcher with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture who specializes in how agriculture adapts to a changing environment. He says understanding the causes of drought is a complicated process: "It probably is explained by changing atmospheric circulation and things like that. But I believe that the most important thing to understand is year-to-year weather variability. This is something that naturally happens. So, it basically is the variability in weather conditions from one year to another, and how much it changes in comparison to the average conditions in a given location. There are years that are going to be drier, and years that are going to be wetter than the average. And this is just part of the natural year-to-year weather variability."
Dr. Elli explained that while the droughts may have been devastating for the crawfish population, overall, what affected Louisiana and parts of southern Arkansas was a regional phenomenon. "Last year was a little drier than normal. Overall, we had drought conditions. Part of South Arkansas was affected, and Louisiana. But overall (crop) production last year was not bad, in my opinion. But there are some locations that were more effected than others."
While Dr. Elli can't say that last year's dry conditions were due to climate change, he does say climate change will change rainfall patterns in the future, elevating the risk of both flood and drought. "We cannot say that this is 100% a consequence of climate change, because you cannot evaluate a single event, but overall climate change is going to increase the frequency of extreme events. We expect, in the future, to have a change in the rainfall patterns here for the region. There are some studies showing that the spring rainfall is expected to increase a little bit and the summer rainfall is expected to decrease. So, in the same season, we might have more problems with flooding events, and we might have problems with drought events in the summer."
While concerns about the long-term impact of climate change remain, eyes turn to next summer, where all crawfish lovers can do is wait and see. Dr. Elli believes, "It's a little too early to just say what the expectations are for this summer." Maudie concurs, "We'll have to see this summer. You know, if this summer is a little bit better, (if) we get a little bit more rain, crawfish are just there." But the prognosis for the remainder of this year's crawfish season is a little bit clearer, and not entirely optimistic. Richard says "nobody" thinks prices for crawfish are going to be as low as they were last year.
