BY GREGORY A. HALL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Steve Price checks the oxygen level and the temperature of the water before stocking juvenile shrimp.
(Patrick Reddy photo)
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RYLAND -- A key to diversifying Kentucky's farming economy is being hatched in a barn in southern Kenton County.
Efforts to raise shrimp in ponds on Kentucky farms have been under way for several years now. For the most part, those shrimp were hatched in Texas and shipped to the Bluegrass State.
Stephen Price's family-run Bluegrass Shrimp & Fish Co. farm in Ryland is believed to be the only privately owned hatchery in Kentucky.
Hatching the shrimp in Kentucky would make the growing operation more profitable and could provide enough baby shrimp in bulk to make large numbers of farmers want to take part.
An acre of water can yield 1,000 pounds of shrimp, which sell for $9 a pound.
An acre of farmland can yield about 2,500 pounds of tobacco, Kentucky's staple crop, which sells for between $1.89 and $2 a pound. "This is just one of the things we're trying to do to offset the pressure on tobacco," said Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Billy Ray Smith, who visited the Price farm Thursday.
Mr. Price's farm is one of about six in the state working with Kentucky State University's aquaculture program. This is the fourth year for stocking the ponds with shrimp. It took one year to build the ponds.
An adult male shrimp raised at Bluegrass Shrimp and Fish Co.
(Patrick Reddy photo)
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The shrimp, technically called freshwater prawns, are hatched in saltwater containers that resemble plastic troughs. They grow there for the 30-day larval stage.
They are then transferred and placed in mesh cages that are kept in what looks like a child's oversized swimming pool. After 30 to 60 days, the shrimp are moved to small ponds where they grow for about 120 days.
Kentucky is warm enough that the shrimp can become large.
The shrimp are fed mash residue from Kentucky distillers.
Field tests across the state the last several years have shown positive results, KSU aquaculture professor Jim Tidwell said. "Every year's improved," he said. The program is still in the research phase.
"Now we're trying to look at ways of increasing our production, our pounds per acre of shrimp that we produce," Mr. Tidwell said. Once that happens, the program can reach out to more farms.
"I think we're real close to that, and so far everything looks promising," Mr. Tidwell said.
More than $2.5 billion a year is spent on imported shrimp for the United States, according to KSU's aquaculture program.
Interest in shrimp farming is growing as assaults on Kentucky's main cash crop, tobacco, keep coming. Recently, even U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Louisville said the end of the tobacco price support program is inevitable.
"We try not to even bring up the tobacco issue," Mr. Tidwell said, "because all that does is get people up in arms."
But he admits he gets more calls all the time.
The state's new two-year budget includes $750,000 for grants and cost-sharing initiatives in aquaculture. In addition to shrimp, catfish, bass and paddlefish are raised in the state.
Kentucky has 60,000 tobacco farms out of 90,000 farms total, he said.
"It's not going to be for everybody," said Mr. Smith."But there are a lot of them that can raise it."
