Currently, drought is not an eligible adverse weather event under the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey-bees and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP).  This program is the only catastrophic disaster assistance program that is truly beneficial for all of the U.S. aquaculture (except farmed turtles and alligator).

Through the efforts of the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation and the crawfish farming community companion legislation has been introduced to include drought as an eligible event to benefit the aquaculture farming community:

• H.R.5691 - Drought Assistance Improvement Act
• S.3836 - CRAWDAD Act

The National Aquaculture Association strongly recommends the aquaculture farming community reach out to their House member and Senators to request they join in supporting this much needed legislation.  Keep in mind contacting local offices is just as effective as attempting to get through to DC offices.

If your Representative, Senator or their office staff have questions, then share with them:

• Drought can trigger a variety of direct and pernicious aquatic animal impacts.
• Drought increases water temperature, reduce surface and groundwater availability, for crawfish that consume aquatic plants in shallow ponds the forage will be killed and as soils dry crawfish are killed through desiccation, and increase salinity to lethal concentrations for farmed molluscan shellfish and crawfish.
• Drought negatively impacts reproductive cycles through death or stress of sexually mature animals.
• Drought can cause collateral negative impacts including intense algae blooms that are directly toxic to farmed aquatic animals and reduced water column dissolved oxygen or reduced soil moisture. These direct and indirect effects will kill, or stress, farmed aquatic animals that are quantifiable by immediate death loss, death loss within a short period of time or chronic death over the period of the drought and lasting drought effects.
• Drought is readily measurable, length and intensity, using local weather or coastal water quality reporting. At the regional or farm level drought can be quantified by accessing drought monitor mapping (Current Map | U.S. Drought Monitor (unl.edu)) and farm-held records for water temperature, flow, and salinity. Given water quantity and quality is essential to farm operations, farms hold long term records that can yield seasonal averages to be compared to current drought induced changes.
• Your experiences with the impact of drought on farmed aquatic animal health and well-being.

Remember to invite your Representative, Senators or staff to visit your farm to learn first-hand your great story in producing high-quality farmed aquatic animals as seafood, bait, recreational fish, ornamental fish and invertebrates for aquariums and water gardening, or  the biological control of nuisance aquatic plants.

If you are unfamiliar with ELAP, please click here for a fact sheet or contact the National Aquaculture Association at naa@nationalaquaculture.org for information.