Louisiana crawfish farmers hope CRAW Act fixes worker shortage that hurt 2026 season

NEW ORLEANS, La. (KPLC)- A one-page bill sponsored by an unlikely team of U.S. congressmen could hold the key to stabilizing the crawfish industry.

As we previously reported, several processing plants across the state were left without H2B visa workers to peel crawfish. Farmers say it sent shockwaves across the industry

“It is going to become a problem to where we are going to have to either scale way, way back on our acres of crawfish or have to shut it down. And then that’s going to bring in foreign seafood,” Joe Arceneaux, a Cameron Parish crawfish farmer said.

Arceneaux says crawfish farming is more logistics than farming. He says he spends months each year navigating federal paperwork, housing requirements, and visa applications just to bring in two workers from Mexico who have fished for him for the past seven years.

Arceneaux relies on H-2A visas, agricultural work permits with no cap on the number issued each year. But crawfish peeling plants depend on a different program, H-2B visas, which are non-agricultural and come with a strict annual cap. This year, the country hit that limit, and the industry felt it.

“We hit the cap on the H-2B visas, which put us in a bind on selling our peeler crawfish, the smaller fish,” Arceneaux said. “By doing that, we’re not able to sell them.”

Peelers - which are the smaller crawfish processed into tail meat and sold in stores like Walmart and Rouse’s - require a separate plant workforce to handle. Without enough H-2B workers to staff peeling plants, farmers like Arceneaux were left with ponds full of small crawfish and nowhere to sell them.

“Peelers are important, to have the market for the little crawfish to sell as tail meat in Walmart, Rouse’s, all the big stores,” he said.

A previous LSU AgCenter study estimated the H-2B shortage could cost Louisiana’s crawfish industry up to $300 million in a worst-case scenario.

Arceneaux said this year was not his worst, but it was below average, down roughly a couple hundred pounds per acre. He worries the problem will only get worse if left unaddressed.

A one-page fix

Just as the Louisiana Farm Bureau Convention kicked off in New Orleans, an unlikely bipartisan team of Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana), Rep. Wilford Carter (D-Louisiana), and Rep. Cleo Fields (D-Louisiana) introduced a one-page federal bill aimed at solving the problem.

The Crawfish Reclassification for Agricultural Workforce Act, or CRAW Act, would move crawfish processing out of the capped H-2B program and into the uncapped H-2A one.

Katie Nunez, chair of the Louisiana Farm Bureau’s Labor Committee, said the change would be straightforward for farmers already familiar with the H-2A program.

“It would take the crawfish processing out of the H-2B program, which caps it, and moves it into the H-2A program,” Nunez said. “So these farms that are already getting H-2A workers to produce their crop, they’re already familiar with the program; they can just start getting their crawfish processors through that, so that they’re not left with no labor to process their crop.”

The bill has not yet reached a congressional committee.

‘Not a single American worker’

Critics of guest worker programs often argue that farmers should hire American workers first. Arceneaux says he does, and has for years, with little success.

Federal law requires employers to advertise jobs to domestic workers before turning to the guest worker program. Arceneaux says he has run newspaper and national job board listings every year from November through mid-January.

“If any domestic workers call for that job, we are required to give them a chance,” he said. “In seven years, I have not had a single American worker call.”

He says the work is simply too hard and too seasonal for most domestic applicants. He added that H-2A workers earn a government-mandated wage of around $14 an hour this year, plus employer-provided housing and transportation.

“It’s not that we’re not willing to pay a domestic worker,” Arceneaux said. “It’s just they’re not available for the jobs.”

The Louisiana Farm Bureau says it will continue pushing the CRAW Act forward, working to connect lawmakers with farmers directly affected by the shortage.