As Inland as You Can Get, Fish Farms Taking Hold

Jim Bradley emerges from a humid warehouse, escaping the unmistakable scent of fish and welcoming an early spring breeze. The son of a son of a farmer turns to a dilapidated barn, remnants of the family hog farming operation.

“That,” he said, “is our house of broken dreams.”

Behind him, the new warehouse is gurgling, its giant water tanks nurturing the fish that are now his livelihood.

“Water farming,” he said, shaking his head. “Who would have thought?”

The technical term for Bradley’s new line of work is aquaculture. He’s one of a growing number of Midwestern farmers and agricultural researchers who see the fish industry as a new frontier, a possible way out of the problems brought on by drought, and low grain and hog prices.

The numbers explain why fish farming seems viable.

The United States in 1998 imported $5.9 billion more in edible fish and seafood than it exported. That’s the largest deficit of any natural resource besides oil, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In the next 15 years, the fisheries service estimates, the annual global demand for fish and seafood will increase by more than 50%, to 120 million metric tons.

About 1 billion pounds of seafood and freshwater fish are consumed annually in the Midwest, yet the region produces less than 2% of that amount, according to the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center at Michigan State University.

LaDon Swann, an aquaculture extension specialist at Purdue University, says it’s this untapped market that’s bringing hundreds of farmers to aquaculture seminars across the Midwest.

“There’s more interest now than ever,” Swann said.

Dennis Mouzin, a grain and melon farmer from southern Indiana, has been using the Internet and attending seminars to learn about fish farming, hoping to supplement his income.

“They’re just starting to promote it up here,” Mouzin said. “So I think there are a lot of people who might want to get in on the ground floor.”

In 1999, in neighboring Illinois, the General Assembly allocated $12 million to be used over 10 years to develop an aquaculture industry. Plans include a processing center in southern Illinois capable of handling 10 million pounds of fish per year, said Steve Killian, executive director of the Illinois Fish Farmers Co-Op.

Killian has organized 16 meetings with Illinois farmers, with more to come, and he’s also pushing aquaculture in high schools to get future farmers interested.

“Last year, Illinois consumed over 60 million pounds of catfish,” Killian said. Of that amount, he said, the state produced only about 100,000 pounds.

While the demand is obvious, persuading farmers to make the switch hasn’t been easy.

“They’ve always farmed hogs or corn or soybean,” Killian said, “and that’s all they know.”

A Whole New Trade to Learn

Bradley’s family has been raising hogs and tending crops in the fields of Ladoga since the 1820s. It was about five years ago that Bradley broke from tradition, trading in his hogs for tanks of tilapia.

“I liked raising hogs when there was money in it,” Bradley said, sitting behind a desk in his office, a white, 8-inch tilapia slowly circling in a nearby aquarium. “But when the money left, it became work.”

That’s when he happened upon an article Swann had written about aquaculture. After life handling hordes of oversized hogs, Bradley figured he could handle a few troughs of fish.

To deal with Indiana’s fluctuating weather, he opted for indoor fish tanks, learning as he went about filtration systems, temperature control and waste disposal. Once the basics were worked out, Bradley and his son Jason built a dozen 6,400-gallon rectangular tanks, each capable of holding about 5,000 pounds of fish.

They started raising tilapia--a tropical fish with a mild, sweet taste--pinpointing optimal feeding times and learning the hard way how to remove the frantic 1-pound fish when they’re ready for market.

“I’ve been hit in the chest by a fish more than once,” Bradley said. “Those tilapia love to jump.”

The savvy developed through years of farming helped Bradley navigate this new industry. Now he’s established a company, Aqua-Manna Inc., to help other farmers learn the business. Bradley estimates an average operation would cost perhaps $200,000 to $450,000 to start.

His dream is to get farmers across the region to form partnerships to develop a true Midwestern fish industry.

“If you’re going to produce fish en masse, it’s going to be done by farmers,” Bradley said. “They know how to handle large quantities of animals better than anyone.”

That was demonstrated during the 1970s, when farmers in the South, particularly cotton farmers, found profits dwindling. Many turned to raising catfish, and that region is now the country’s aquaculture hub.

From the air, some areas of the Delta region of the Mississippi have so many ponds “it just looks like you’re flying over a big body of water,” said Stanley Nelson, publisher of Aquaculture News, a monthly industry paper.

Paul Brown, an aquaculture professor at Purdue, sees similarities between the South in the 1970s and the Midwest today.

“If history repeats itself, that’s probably what you’re going to see happen again,” Brown said. “I think you’re going to see farmers looking for alternatives as long as prices are down.”

Swann said that for aquaculture to take off in the Midwest, bankers must learn about it along with farmers, to deal with loan applications.

Joe Morris, an extension specialist at Iowa State University, said he can envision an aquaculture boom, but he advises farmers to be cautious.

“Aquaculture is not for everyone,” he said. “It’s a tough business. It can be every bit as complicated as a dairy operation.”

One problem with fish farming is a lack of drugs to treat fish diseases. If a cow gets sick, a farmer can usually nurse it back to health. If a tankful of fish get sick, the farmer’s out of luck, and money.

Another problem with aquaculture is the cost of food, which has to be tailored to meet the needs of different species of fish. Researchers at Purdue are trying find a concoction of common Midwestern crops that will give fish proper nutrition. That would allow fish farmers to buy from other farmers in the area, benefiting both.

Brown, the Purdue professor, said all of this will take time. “I think the opportunities are real,” he said. “But there’s a whole lot of things that have to happen.”

Bradley is willing to be patient: “It’s farmers that are going to make this thing happen, if anybody does.”