Clara Ann Yates, in a silver sequined dress with a bouquet of red roses in her arms and a purple sash reading “Miss Catfish,” bent her knees on the steps of the Belzoni, Miss., courthouse in April 2024 to accept her crown. As a kid who grew up in the neighboring Yazoo County, she would watch the event each year her family attended, and she often envisioned herself on stage next to other contestants. Now, after competing for the honor for three years, she was finally looking out toward the crowd, her eyes glistening with joy and pride.
“Some people are kind of scared when they hear it’s a pageant because they think it’s based on looks, but it is based solely on your knowledge of the catfish industry,” Yates said of the pageant, which is part of the larger World Catfish Festival held in Humphreys County each spring.
While she lived in a region of the state known for its catfish farms, Yates knew effectively nothing about catfish until she began touring various farms to speak with catfish producers as part of a research project she was undertaking as a student studying communications and kinesiology at Mississippi State University, she said. One visit led to another, and she soon found herself motivated to keep learning more about the trade.
At one point, she tossed a handful of feed into a pond on one of these farms, and hundreds of fish swam toward her to devour the feed floating on the surface of the water. The setting sun bounced off their scales and scattered beams of light onto their surroundings. The scene surprised her, but the beauty of it solidified her desire to advocate for the catfish industry and thus enter the Miss Catfish contest.
“We thrive off of catfish. You can’t go to a town (in the South) where they don’t have at least two to three restaurants that serve catfish.” Yates told the Mississippi Free Press. “It’s a common food in the South, especially in Mississippi. So that’s why it’s so important to be an advocate for the catfish industry, just because so many restaurants and businesses and companies rely on catfish farms.”
Farmers raise catfish for years before it winds up on supermarket shelves and on restaurant tables. Yates said it’s important for consumers to know that catfish are raised in ponds of clean water free of man-made or natural pollutants like mercury. Farmers feed fish from the top of the pond and not at the low depths. She claimed that fish raised in this way seemingly taste better than fish raised in natural settings, where they eat near the bottom of their habitats. Those fish have a more muddy flavor, she asserted.
When catfish reach adulthood, they are gathered into large nets by the hundreds and shipped to warehouses where they are harvested. Yates confidently explained her research at last year’s festival on a small stage where she encouraged Americans to buy locally grown fish to support the regional economy instead of purchasing foreign-raised fish. Her commitment to highlight the hard work of local farmers impressed the panel of judges for the Miss Catfish scholarship competition. They awarded her the title for her speech.
The Yazoo City, Miss., native presented her findings about the economic consequences of having foreign-raised catfish in the United States’ market at the 2025 Catfish Farmers of America Convention, where producers gather to discuss topics that affect the industry. She determined that, despite Mississippi’s long history of being major exporters of catfish, farmers nowadays struggled to make as much of a living as they had in the past.
“For some people the catfish industry is their life; it’s all they’ve ever known,” Yates said. “So you go to towns, and for a lot of the kids, their parents, aunts and uncles all work at catfish farms. (The industry) produces a lot of jobs for people.”
Many local producers earn only a fraction of the costs to raise catfish in the first place. Meanwhile, about 70% of the fish found in stores is imported from China and Vietnam and sold at competitively cheaper prices. In Mississippi, where the poverty rate is 18.0%, a number of consumers opt to buy the more affordable product.
The United States has strict safety and quality regulations that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and others have established over the years. These standards ensure that fish are raised in clean sanitary conditions and that they are not given antibiotics or hormones. For Yates, not knowing the precise details surrounding how fish are raised abroad has led her to feel more comfortable with eating locally sourced catfish when she can help it.
Whenever Yates patronizes a restaurant that serves catfish, she searches for signage explaining the fish’s place of origin. If the business does not list such information, Yates makes a point to speak to the staff to explain that FDA law specifies that the information must be on display for customers. The college senior said that she does this “everywhere she goes” and that she believes it to be a good way to advocate for the catfish industry in a public setting.
Since receiving the Miss Catfish title, Yates has visited public schools in Mississippi to read books to children about catfish. They have the opportunity to ask her about the animal, and she enjoys seeing their enthusiasm, she said.
“I usually have a lot of kids ask me if I have a catfish costume,” Yates recalled. “I think it’s funny to me, but no, I don’t have a catfish costume. But they want to know more. They’re eager to learn.”
Fluctuations in the Market
The catfish industry reached a high point in the 1970s when Humphreys County was deemed the “Catfish Capital of the World.” Many factories opened, creating jobs that boosted the state’s economy, leading Mississippi Gov. Cliff Finch to establish the World Catfish Festival in 1976 to celebrate the success of the trade. While the festival’s legacy has endured, the profitability of the catfish industry in Mississippi took a downward turn starting in the early 2000s.
“The price of feed got so high that it forced a lot of smaller farmers out of business. And over the years, the number of ponds just kind of dwindled,” Dr. Jimmy Avery, an aquaculture professor with the Mississippi State University Extension Service who has studied the subject of catfish for about 40 years, told the Mississippi Free Press.
Rising popularity of imported fish led to lower demand for the locally raised animals. Many of Mississippi’s producers closed their farms, and Mississippians lost jobs. High feed costs, lower profit margins and cheaper fish that foreign competitors sold in the U.S. made it difficult for small farms to keep running their businesses. The state’s catfish pond acreage reached a peak of 130,500 acres in 2001, but that number dwindled to 29,000 acres in 2024. Some farmers converted many of those catfish ponds into traditional cropland to grow corn, soybeans and rice instead.
The current total catfish pond acreage is a fraction of what it used to be, and it continues to decrease each year. Jon Cooper, a catfish farmer and a manager at Tackett Farms, ran his own small business named C&C Fish Farms for 15 years, but he had to shut it down because he did not earn enough income to cover maintenance costs. Dr. Avery expects the number of catfish pond acreage to keep decreasing.
Catfish farmers have to earn enough to cover operation costs and to make a profit. The prices of catfish have fluctuated but remained low. The cost of feed is usually about half of a producer’s budget for farming. Prices for feed rose with inflation last year, reaching record amounts. Additional expenses to run a farm include the cost of electricity, water aerators, staff and marketing.
“Humphreys County probably saw some of the largest reduction in acreage,” Avery said. “It used to be the number one in terms of acreage, farms and production. Now it’s probably second to Sunflower County because there are several large farms that have processing capacity.”
Financial hardships slammed Humphreys County’s economy. People moved away to find work elsewhere, bringing the town’s population to 7,570 as of 2023, almost half the amount it had in the ’70s when it earned the “Catfish Capital of the World” title. The county never recovered from its losses. The unemployment rate is relatively high, and the median household income is around $45,000. Most farmers in Humphreys could not afford to keep running their businesses.
“The fish wasn’t a viable economic product anymore,” Avery explained. “It happened over a period of 20 or 30 years. Maybe three or two catfish processing plants are still in operation. Everything else has gone back to row-crop farming.”
Nevertheless, the catfish industry’s rise in Mississippi has its silver linings that are still relevant today, as scientific revelations provide local farmers with the knowledge and means to increase their yields. For example, the MSU Extension Service conducted crucial biological research over the past 40 years that has improved the wellbeing and production of catfish. Growing fish from the fingerling stage takes years of devotion; if the fish die, get sick or become contaminated, farmers do not get compensated for their hard work.
Farmers now use aerators to pump oxygen into ponds, raise a new breed of fish that is more likely to survive and use vaccines in the fish feed instead of antibiotics to keep their fish healthy. The methods yield more fish per acreage that meet quality standards and in a shorter amount of time.
“We have been able to help the catfish industry grow from roughly 4,000 pounds to the acre of production to almost 8,000 pounds,” Avery said. “So we’ve almost doubled the efficiency on these farms.”
Researchers studied how oxygen levels in ponds affect the health of aquatic animals. They found that when the amount of oxygen added to the ponds via aeration is tripled or doubled, more fish are produced. If the catfish do not receive enough oxygen, it causes them stress, and the animals don’t want to eat, or they can become susceptible to diseases. Farmers are then at risk of losing crucial feeding days or product, and both slow down the production process.
Cooper agrees with the center’s research. “Checking oxygen levels is probably the most important part of keeping the animals healthy,” he said. “A whole lot of the problems start with low oxygen. So the main thing is to reduce stress as much as possible—which means staying on top of oxygen and keeping the animals as happy and healthy as possible.”
Tackett Farms is a large producer in the state and is one of the several farms that have benefited from the research scientists at the MSU Extension Service have conducted. Cooper oversees the oxygen levels in the catfish ponds and sends farmhands to check oxygen manually every two hours. The levels are kept high to maintain the fish relaxed. If levels are low supplemental oxygen is aerated into the pond. The catfish receive vaccines to prevent sickness via their feed.
Festivities Persist in Downtown Belzoni
Even with setbacks, Mississippi is still the leading catfish producer in the country. In 2024, the state earned $214 million from fish sales, making catfish the nation’s seventh-largest agricultural commodity. Belzoni and Humphreys County at large continue to celebrate the industry that helped their economies flourish to great heights today. The 48th-annual World Catfish Festival will take place in downtown Belzoni on Saturday, April 5, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The World Catfish Festival is an event Mississippians attend from childhood into adulthood and a tradition that is passed on from generations. Dr. Avery and Jon Cooper, who are Mississippi natives themselves, have attended the event since they were children and now go with their kids. They both expressed excitement over getting together with friends and family again at the festival this year, too.
On a Friday night in 2022, just nine weeks before that year’s festival, Emily Tillman received a text message asking if she wanted to serve as the festival’s president. She accepted the offer and has been helping to plan the annual event with a volunteer committee ever since, as she is passionate about preserving the festival’s legacy of celebrating Mississippi’s arts, food and aquaculture industries.
“We couldn’t let one of the longest festivals in the state die. I was compelled to help my community,” Tillman, who works as an audio producer during the day, told the Mississippi Free Press. “As I got into it, I wanted to make it more efficient and more interesting and fun. … After the first year I was kind of hooked. I very much enjoy keeping this legacy going because it’s a very important and historic festival for the state.”
One of Tillman’s goals has been to showcase the state’s rich musical heritage. Black soldiers and plantation slaves in the Mississippi Delta sang songs that led to the creation of the blues genre. The song “Catfish Blues,” a gem about wanting to be a catfish, influenced rock musicians like The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.
For this year’s festival Tillman booked renowned blues artists to perform live. Headliners this year include Castro Coleman, also known as Mr. Sipp, who won the 2014 International Blues Challenge, and John Clayton White and his band, who won first place in the 2024 Mississippi Delta Blues Society’s regional International Blues Challenge.
“You have a good draw with good music. It makes vendors want to come because they’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that artist; that means people are going to be there, so I want to be there.’” Tillman said. “Once we got better music and we were really amping up the marketing, then the vendors started pouring in. So when I say I want to put my stamp on it, I just really mean that I wanted to try to bring it back to its former heyday.”
Tillman and her staff have worked hard to increase the amount of people who visit the festival. Last year, the event had almost 9,000 attendees. Its success has led the festival to run out of vendor spaces quickly, so the committee welcomes businesses on a first-come, first-accepted basis.
“So it’s really served to be a really huge economic simulator of this area.” Tillman said.
Tickets for the festival cost $5 per person, and money raised goes back into the Belzoni community through donations to local libraries, parks and other resources. Nearby towns in Yazoo County and Sunflower County also benefit from out-of-state travelers seeking accommodations.
More than 100 arts and crafts vendors will be at the festival this year while Larry’s Fish House, Shivers Creek Catfish House and Catfish Cabin are going to sell fried fish. The festival includes a catfish-eating contest, with the winner receiving a $500 prize. Easter-themed activities for children and families will also be available in addition to annual favorites such as the Miss Catfish Pageant and the Belzoni Garden Club Play.
“You get to see all the people in your community. It’s always fun to see your friends and your neighbors—you know, seeing people that you haven’t seen in a long time,” Tillman said.
The World Catfish Festival takes place on Saturday, April 5, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in downtown Belzoni, Miss. Tickets are $5. For more information on the World Catfish Festival, visit catfishcapitol.com or find the festival’s business page on Facebook.
