Jason “Bubba” Braswell flips a switch in the cab of his modified truck and pellets start spraying into an adjacent pond. The surface boils as young catfish race to collect the feed on his farm, just south of a little airstrip where brightly colored crop-dusters buzz in and out all day.

Braswell loves raising the whiskered food fish here in the Mississippi delta, but scores of other catfish farmers weren’t so lucky after the catfish bubble burst in the late 2000s.

“Just about everybody went bust around here,” said Braswell, 53, who left the catfish industry for a decade before returning to it a couple of years ago. “It was devastating to the area. It broke families apart.”

But in a region that has farmed the fish since the 1960s, Belzoni is not quite ready to relinquish its claim as “the catfish capital of the world”.

A cement catfish sculpture is displayed in front of city hall in downtown Belzoni.

Named after an 18th-century Italian circus giant and explorer, this small city still holds an annual catfish festival each spring, which includes a Miss Catfish pageant and a catfish-eating contest. A fish fry is still the preferred way to celebrate a special occasion.

But the catfish has not been a kind mascot in recent years. The population of Belzoni has dipped below 2,000 for the first time in a century, according to the US Census Bureau.

And while Belzoni claims that it once had more millionaires than any other city in Mississippi, nearly a quarter of households in this delta town make less than $10,000 a year, with a median household income of about $28,000. That compares to a statewide household income of $42,000, meaning Belzoni is significantly poorer than most other places in the nation’s poorest state.

A lot of that poverty can be directly tied to the fortunes of the fish. Most of the US’s catfish is farmed in Mississippi, and the bulk of the farms and processors are here in the Mississippi delta. But the region has far fewer ponds and processing plants than it used to.

Top: Will Nobile counts catfish ‘fingerlings’ atop a semi trailer at Nobile Fish Farm near the town of Sunflower. Nobile’s father began raising catfish decades ago and now he oversees daily operations of 60-plus separate ponds in addition to agricultural fields. Right: An aerator spins in a catfish pond at Jubilee Farms. Left: Catfish ‘fingerlings’ swim in a transportation tank on a tractor trailer at Jubilee Farms. The fish are moved to other farms, where they are raised to maturity.

Mississippi had more than 111,000 acres of catfish ponds in 2002, nearly 60% of the nation’s total, said Jimmy Avery, a catfish farming expert and Mississippi State University professor. As of last year, acreage had fallen to about 36,000.

A 2008 report in the Journal of Applied Aquaculture noted that catfish farms and processing plants had provided desperately needed jobs in Mississippi, where factories were closing in droves. As of 2001, researchers wrote, the catfish industry employed nearly 11,000 people and contributed $550m to the economy nationally. By 2008, those figures had fallen to 7,800 jobs and $400m.

“People were making a ton of money,” said Craig Tucker, a longtime Mississippi State professor who now studies catfish and other aquaculture for the US Department of Agriculture. He is considered one of the fathers of the farmed catfish industry. “It looked limitless. The decline kind of caught us by surprise.”

A fisherman from Harvest Select Catfish company displays a catfish that was fished out of a pond on an aquaculture farm in Uniontown, Alabama. Photograph by Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

The trouble began in the mid-2000s, when feed prices shot up as ethanol demand drove up corn prices. Around the same time, US restaurants started buying much cheaper whitefish from Asia, especially Vietnamese swai. The imports sparked a bitter trade war, with American farmers claiming again and again that swai were raised in “cesspools”. Much of the “catfish” found on US menus now is actually swai, tilapia or other unrelated fish, experts say.

Federal data shows catfish imports from Asia dropped off in 2018 as the US instituted new inspection rules, but that decline was offset by an increase in imports of other whitefish often substituted for catfish on US menus.

The domestic decline, meanwhile, has had dire consequences for Belzoni and surrounding areas that once counted on catfish for income and taxes. Belzoni is the seat of Humphreys county, where unemployment was 9.1% in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with a labor force half the size it was in 2003.

The local hospital closed in 2013, and the area lost its only John Deere dealership, Braswell said. “If you’re not a banker or a farmer, you don’t want to live here,” he said, referring to the bank loans doled out to delta landowners.

Cement catfish sculptures are displayed on several street corners in downtown Belzoni.

Catfish sculptures line the streets

Talking to locals frequently unearths bitterness about the region and the catfish industry. Older catfish farmers gather around a table at The Varsity restaurant in Belzoni some afternoons and discuss their hardships over coffee. The restaurant serves a tasty fried catfish, and a “catfish capital of the world” sign greets patrons.

The restaurant’s owner, Jerry Wade, recalls the good old days but he now lives in the town of Gluckstadt, about an hour south, and few of his customers are still in the fish business.

“When I say people went out of business, it didn’t happen one by one. It happened in groups,” said Wade, donning a catfish-adorned baseball cap while a local preacher carried in a television he had procured for the restaurant. “We’re holding on by threads here.”

A plate of cajun-fried catfish is served with Miss Betty’s potato salad and fresh collard greens at Florida Avenue Grill in Washington DC. Photograph by Sarah L Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty

A few blocks away, in the former bank building that serves as Belzoni’s city hall, Carol Ivy, the mayor, complained that the few residents left in town couldn’t – or wouldn’t – pay their property taxes. The city will probably have to borrow money to fill potholes and prevent floods, she said.

Ivy grew up in Belzoni but left when she was 18 before returning 30 years later. Tired of watching her city deteriorate, she ran for mayor in 2017.

“I felt like I may be able to restore it to some of the Mayberry atmosphere it had before,” said Ivy, 76. “I’m glad I did it, but I’ve had to beg people for money.”

But the delta’s troubles have done little to diminish the local passion for a fish that has caused so much economic consternation.

Most delta restaurants have catfish on the menu, and painted catfish sculptures line the streets in Belzoni’s dilapidated downtown.

Across the US, Mississippi residents eat the most farmed catfish, followed by Arkansas and Texas, according to the Catfish Farmers of America.

Jason ‘Bubba’ Braswell walks between catfish ponds at his farm near the town of Belzoni.

Milder taste: catfish with parmesan

The catfish eaten in the region has a slightly milder taste than the river-bred varieties, which were often described as having a “muddy” flavor before farming took off. While fried catfish is the most popular variety in the delta, some restaurants have other options. At The Crown restaurant in Indianola, for example, customers can order poached catfish with parmesan, butter and green onions, catfish cakes or a catfish po’ boy sandwich.

Even Renee Hawkins, who curates Belzoni’s catfish museum and is on the festival’s board of directors, maintains her passion for the fish despite the loss of her husband’s and brother-in-law’s catfish farm jobs years ago. Catfish is one of those things that makes the delta tick, she said.

“Heritage is real big around here,” Hawkins said in the museum, which is ringed by sculptures made from catfish-farming equipment.

Farm employees work to gather catfish ‘fingerlings’ in a pond at Nobile Fish Farm near the town of Sunflower.

The advantages of a hybrid catfish

The struggling industry has been helped somewhat in recent years by the adoption of a hybrid catfish that is more resistant to disease and provides more meat than the channel catfish farmers raised before. The new fish is now raised by most delta farmers, who rave about its hardiness and how fast it grows.

And most catfish farmers, who know better than to hang their fortunes entirely on the volatile fish market, also grow row crops such as soybeans, corn or rice.

About 40 miles north-west of Belzoni, at a peculiar cluster of university and government buildings populated largely by researchers, Jackson, Tucker and others are studying the catfish and its effects on the delta economy. Just inside the front doors of the Thad Cochran Warmwater Aquaculture Center here, after visitors have walked past a metal catfish sculpture outside, a fish tank is stocked with catfish; they’re fed daily by Ganesh Kumar, an assistant research professor who has just started a yearlong study of the economic effects of the catfish crash.

Catfish makes up a huge chunk of the US farmed-fish market, Kumar said, and any decline in the catfish industry hurts the broader market. Japan and the US are the only two nations with a shrinking aquaculture industry, he said. In Mississippi in particular, Kumar said, the loss of so many processing plants has meant the few remaining farmers have fewer places to sell their fish.

Top: Employees work to process catfish fillets at Consolidated Catfish Producers LLC. Left: Employees work to process catfish fillets at Consolidated Catfish Producers LLC. Right: Boxes stacked for shipping at Consolidated Catfish Producers LLC.

Thousands of jobs gone

Just north of Belzoni, the desolate town of Isola is home to the Consolidated Catfish plant, the combination of two merged processors: Country Select and Delta Pride. At their peak, the two companies employed 3,500 people. The combined company employs just 500, and it reduces its reliance on local farmers by raising some of its own fish; the company processes 1.2m pounds of catfish a week, said the company’s president, Dick Stevens, who also is an elected Humphreys county supervisor.

The fact that Consolidated raises its own fish “would be difficult for the farmers if they existed, but they’re no longer here”, said Stevens, who started farming catfish in 1968, just as the industry was getting off the ground. “The guys that are left understand.”

The Consolidated plant sits at the southern end of the town of just over 600 people. Weeds sprout from abandoned buildings and broken windows are everywhere. But trucks loaded with catfish come and go frequently at the bustling plant, where workers trim fish and sort fillets as they zip down conveyor belts.

Jerry Johnson, the plant’s 55-year-old union leader, has been working there since 1994. While it’s nice to have one last large employer left in Isola, he said, employees deserve better.

“The pay scale ain’t that good,” said Johnson, a bagging machine operator. “They should be paying more.”

But coworker Vivian Woods, who started at Delta Pride in 1983, said she was happy to have her job trimming the fish. The industry seems to be improving a bit recently, she said.

“It provides a lot of jobs for a lot of people,” said Woods, who grew up and lives in Shaw, about 30 miles from the plant. “We used to work three days a week, then it was four days and now it’s back to five days.”

Farm employees work to gather catfish ‘fingerlings’ in a pond at Nobile Fish Farm near the town of Sunflower.

Immigrant workers

Even with a shortage of jobs in the area, farmers complain they have trouble finding local workers. Many employ immigrants, sometimes after frustrating attempts to use local labor. While Mississippi is a solidly red state, where 58% of voters went for Donald Trump, much of the delta is solidly blue: more than 70% of both Humphreys and Sunflower counties voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

At Jubilee Farms, about 30 miles north of Belzoni, the owners cycled through about 80 employees for six jobs in less than three years, said Wilson Holland, the 28-year-old vice-president, whose father started the company. Jubilee finally started using temporary workers from the H-2A visa program, which has helped stabilize the company, Holland said.

“The first thing is finding people who are willing to work,” he said, standing next to one of the family’s 160 ponds. “The other thing is finding people who are willing to work and to care.”

Farm workers Patricio Andablo, Narciso Villano, Emmanuel Garduño, Sergio Zuñiga, Junior Moreno and Juan Andablo stand for a portrait at Jubilee Farms. The men all work under the H-2A visa for temporary agricultural workers.

On a recent morning, some of Jubilee’s workers, most from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, waded into a pond while another used a tractor to scoop loads of young catfish into a waiting tractor trailer to be hauled to other farms. Shotgun shells littered the ground around the ponds, the remnants of around-the-clock attempts to scare off migrating cormorants that feed on catfish as they pass over the delta.

Holland, the oldest of eight siblings, watched the industry struggle and never planned to go into catfish. Unlike many rural teens, Holland decided to leave the delta for college, first studying mechanical engineering at a small college in Tennessee before completing a master’s degree in biosystems engineering at Auburn University in Alabama. His graduate work propelled him back into the catfish world, which he views with a wary eye.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,” Holland said. “I love it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”