Fruge Aquafarms

How Frugé Aquafarms Produces Over One Million Pounds of Crawfish Each Year | Eater

"About 40 years ago, rice growers discovered that the two-year cycle of crawfish dovetails with the two-year rice rotation, so fields are seeded with baby crawfish every other year to provide an additional source of food and income. The rice acts as protective cover—shielding young crawfish from birds and heat—then after the rice is harvested the fields are flooded to about two feet for crawfish production. Harvesting is hands-on: traps are emptied into a manual pushboat, crawfish travel along a conveyor where they’re washed and sorted, juveniles are returned to the fields to repopulate, and market-sized animals are shipped to customers; the operation yields over a million crawfish annually. After work, the owners demonstrate a traditional southern crawfish boil using their custom boiler and spice mix, steaming crawfish with corn and potatoes—producing meat that the host likened to "the best parts of lobster and shrimp." - Terri Ciccone