Cooperative Extension helping farmers learn to raise prawns

Americans love to eat seafood. According to a recent National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration report, we each put away 16½ pounds in 2006, or 4.9 billion pounds in total.

That’s a lot of flounder, crabs, grouper and shrimp, the seafood staple that leads the way at 4.4 pounds consumed per person.

But the vast majority – 85 percent – of shrimp consumed in the United States is imported. The N.C. Cooperative Extension Service is hoping to change that with its freshwater prawn farming program. A meeting last week at Brunswick Community College outlined the program and introduced those interested to some people who have already taken the plunge into the backyard seafood business.

“Wild shrimp fisheries (in the United States) have been unable to provide any more than they do now since 1990,” said N.C. Cooperative Extension aquaculture agent Mike Frinsko. “And demand continues to increase. We hope this program will help fill some of that need.”

Frinsko said the objective of the project is not to replace shrimp as a seafood staple but rather to appeal to a smaller but growing market of people who want to buy products grown locally without antibiotics, pesticides or other additives.

“This product is healthy, environmentally friendly and clean,” he said. “It fits that market perfectly.”

Prawn farming has been practiced in the United States for about 50 years, but the North Carolina program started five years ago.

“Gene Wiseman from Goldsboro came to me after he read about prawn farming,” Frinsko said. “I was familiar with them from working with prawn farms about 15 years ago in Mississippi.

“I gave him a lot of reasons he couldn’t do it, but at the same time, I said I’d work with him to get started. I told him marketing was crucial to the success of this program. He took it to heart and has made it work.”

Eight freshwater prawn farms are operating in North Carolina, Frinsko said. He hopes meetings like the one at BCC will draw new interest and eventually new operations.

The school set up a pond for freshwater prawns late last year, adding to the mix of species in its aquaculture program.

“We’re encouraging people to come on board,” Frinsko said. “But we don’t want someone to come in and start up with a 100-acre operation. We want to keep farms at a small, manageable size so we can control the overall quality of the product.”

Freshwater prawns are cousins to the more familiar Atlantic shrimp. They grow larger and have a firmer, denser and meatier texture, said Tom Hollowell Jr., who has raised them for the past two years on his Northampton County farm in Sea Board.

Hollowell, like many North Carolina farmers, has had to find ways to keep his farm productive after his primary cash crop, in his case peanuts, became unsustainable because of economic factors. He raises hogs for Smithfield Farms, a few cows and even some flowers. He said his prawn farm has cost about $45,000 to start and maintain in the past two years.

“It’ll be a few years before this makes money,” he said. “But I feel strongly about this product and think it has a good chance here.”

Joe Thompson just completed a 2,700-pound harvest, which must be done in late September or early October before water temperatures drop below 65 degrees, from the two 2-acre ponds at his Cedar Grove farm in Orange County. He and his son became interested in prawn farming after a hip replacement made it difficult to continue the hard labor of tobacco farming.

“The demand is tremendous,” Thompson said. “I just wish I had more product to sell. It goes pretty fast; we get people from all over – Virginia, New York, anybody who’s hungry.”

John and Natalie Relyea are in their second year of operation on their farm in Walstonburg, about 30 miles west of Greenville. Their 2007 harvest yielded almost 3,100 pounds. They attended the BCC meeting to give a firsthand account of their experience.

“Some people are skeptical at first,” Natalie Relyea said. “We went to shed some light on the process, and to let people taste some of the cooked product, which is delicious.”

Frinsko and Relyea said demand is growing for the prawns, and several Triangle-area restaurants have become regular customers. They describe the flavor as more akin to lobster or crab than to shrimp. The price of $8 per pound is higher than the average shrimp price, but Relyea said once people try it, they’re sold.

“You can grill them, sauté them or boil them,” Relyea said. “And they can cook longer than shrimp and take on a different flavor. The longer you boil them (about eight minutes), the more they taste like lobster.”

And with America’s appetite for seafood, the more likely they’ll end up on your dinner plate in the near future.