United States
Ictalurids are cultivated in North America (especially in the Deep South, with Mississippi being the largest domestic catfish producer). Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) supports a $450 million/yr aquaculture industry. The US farm-raised catfish industry began in the early 1960s in Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Channel catfish quickly became the major catfish grown, as it was hardy and easily spawned in earthen ponds. By the late 60s, the industry moved into the Mississippi Delta as farmers struggled with sagging profits in cotton, rice and soybeans, especially on those farm areas where soils had a very high clay content.
The Mississippi Deltaic Plain includes two active pro-grading deltas: the modern bird-foot delta, commonly referred to as the Mississippi Delta, and the Atchafalya delta. In addition, there are degrading deltaic systems, such as the Lafourche and the St. Bernard . These deltas became the industry home for the catfish industry, as they had the soils, climate and shallow aquifers to provide water for the earthen ponds that grow 360-380 million pounds (160,000 to 170,000 tons) of catfish annually. Catfish are fed a grain-based diet that includes soybean meal. Fish are fed daily through the summer at rates of 1-6% of body weight with the pelleted floating feed. Catfish need about two pounds of feed to produce one pound of live weight. Mississippi is home to 100,000 acres (400 km2) of catfish ponds, the largest of any state. Other states important in growing catfish include Alabama and Louisiana.
Read more about this topic: Aquaculture Of Catfish
Famous quotes related to united states:
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of ‘Uncle Sam’ the full amount of both Principal and Interest.”
—Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)