SEAFOOD RESEARCH SERIES | PAPER NO. 3

The Siluriformes Business:

The Economics of Raising and Processing Catfish, Basa, and Swai

In the United States, siluriformes economics are split between a farm-side business built around feed, acreage, and processor access, and a plant-side business built around yield, product form, cold storage, and import competition. Pangasius exports from Vietnam shape both sides of the market.^1,3,8,10,11

Prepared for publication by Farm Animal Transparency with the assistance of AI | March 12, 2026

At a glance

Executive Summary

Siluriformes economics are easiest to understand by separating raising from processing. On the farm, U.S. catfish growers sell a live animal into a processor-led chain. In 2025 they recorded $393.8 million in total sales, the top four states accounted for 96 percent of those sales, and 92.7 percent of foodsize fish sold first to processors rather than to direct consumer channels.¹

That structure makes scale and cost control decisive. Feed typically accounts for 50-60 percent of catfish production costs. Although feed prices eased from their 2023 peak, Mississippi State economists reported in 2024 that production costs still ran about $1.12-$1.30 per pound while growers were receiving roughly $1.10-$1.15 per pound. Off-flavor alone imposed direct farm-level costs of about $39.9 million in 2022.^4,5,6

In the plant, margins depend on how much of each fish can be sold into the most profitable form. Mississippi State’s 2026 seafood-processing overview reported that farmed catfish products added an average of $522 million annually over the prior four years. But a 2024 comparative by-product study found that U.S. catfish processors averaged only 46 percent edible yield, largely because U.S. demand emphasizes fillets, while pangasius processors averaged 77 percent edible yield because more product moves as headed-and-gutted fish and more co-products find buyers.^8,10,11

Where the economics sit

The table below summarizes the different commercial logics of raising fish, processing fish, and competing with imported pangasius.^1-11

Source synthesis based on Endnotes 1-11.

Raising siluriformes is a feed-heavy farm business

For U.S. ictalurid catfish growers, the basic business model is to put live fish on fewer, more productive acres and keep them moving to processors. USDA reported 48,115 water acres in production as of January 1, 2026, down 8 percent from a year earlier, with foodsize fish on 38,090 acres. Yet 2025 foodsize sales still reached 330.0 million pounds live weight worth $366.9 million, or about $1.11 per pound. That mix – fewer acres, steady throughput, and only moderate price movement – captures the industry’s current logic: higher productivity has to offset acreage contraction and tight margins.¹

The grower is therefore not operating in an ordinary retail seafood business. The grower is producing a live commodity for a narrow set of first buyers, and those buyers overwhelmingly are processors. That gives farm economics a processor-led character: fish have to be available in the sizes plants want, at the time plants want them, and at a live-fish cost plants can still turn into a profitable processed product.^1,5

Feed, biology, and scale decide who stays profitable

Feed remains the dominant cost center. Alabama Extension says feed typically accounts for 50-60 percent of aquaculture production costs, and catfish feed peaked at nearly $600 per ton in early 2023 before falling almost 25 percent by mid-2025. That easing helped, but it did not restore easy margins.⁴

Mississippi State reported in 2024 that 32 percent protein feed had stabilized around $475 per ton, while labor, fingerlings, fuel, and interest expenses remained elevated. In the same update, MSU economists estimated production costs at roughly $1.12-$1.30 per pound against farm prices of about $1.10-$1.15 per pound. They also noted that the squeeze falls hardest on small and medium farms, because larger operations are better positioned to spread fixed costs and survive multi-year periods of flat or negative returns.⁵

Biological risk turns directly into financial risk. A 2024 Mississippi State dissertation abstract estimated direct annual off-flavor management costs at $39.9 million in 2022. Even when fish eventually sell, harvest delays, rejected samples, treatment costs, and missed market windows all reduce the value of the crop before it ever reaches the plant.⁶

Technology has pushed the farm side toward intensification

The industry’s strategic response has not been retreat but intensification. A multi-state survey of Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi found average aeration rates of 7.8 kW per hectare, automated oxygen monitoring on 97 percent of catfish farms, hybrid catfish on 53 percent of water area, and a 59 percent increase in foodfish productivity from 2010 to 2019.⁷

Economically, those figures point to a more capital-intensive business than the industry’s older pond-farming image suggests. Modern catfish growing increasingly depends on equipment, aeration, monitoring, vaccination, and tighter management to gain better yields per acre. That usually favors operators that can finance upgrades and absorb more technical risk in exchange for higher output.^5,7

Processing is a yield, throughput, and inventory business

Processing plants do not make money simply because live fish arrive at the dock. They make money when they can recover the right portions of the fish, move them into the right product forms, and keep labor, freezing, and storage costs under control. Mississippi State’s 2026 seafood-processing overview reported that farmed catfish products added an average of $522 million annually over the past four years. USDA ARS researchers also estimated that the broader 2019 catfish value chain – farms, feed mills, and processing plants – generated $1.10 billion in direct output and $1.91 billion in total economic contribution in the tri-state region.^8,9

At plant level, yield is the decisive technical-economic variable. A 2024 by-product study reported an average edible yield of 46 percent for U.S. catfish processors, largely because the U.S. market emphasizes fillets, which recover less saleable weight than headed-and-gutted product. The same study found that processors utilized nearly 100 percent of catfish processing by-products, with over 68,000 tonnes of processing waste and about 2,300 tonnes of weigh-backs moving to rendering plants.¹⁰

That study also helps explain why product mix matters so much. Oversized fish were reported to be too large for mechanical lines and too expensive to process by hand, so they were sold to rendering plants for about $0.13 per kilogram after freight. In other words, the processor’s margin depends not just on buying live fish cheaply, but on whether each fish can move efficiently through a plant and into the right channel.¹⁰

Why imported pangasius shapes the whole market

Any economic overview of siluriformes has to account for imported basa and swai, not just domestic channel or hybrid catfish. Mississippi State reported that U.S. catfish imports averaged 243.3 million pounds and $378.5 million from 2019 to 2024, with Vietnam supplying about 89.5 percent of import value. USDA’s Economic Research Service has separately noted that rising seafood imports have put downward pressure on domestic aquaculture prices and revenues.^2,3

That import pressure is backed by a large, export-oriented pangasius system. USDA’s Ho Chi Minh City office reported that Vietnam produced 872,000 tons of pangasius in the first half of 2025 and exported about $1 billion of it during the same period. The 2024 by-product study found pangasius edible yield at 77 percent, in part because more product moves as headed-and-gutted fish and because skins, stomachs, and swim bladders can be sold into local food markets.^10,11

The comparison does not mean every pangasius processor is more efficient than every U.S. catfish plant. It does mean the two sectors are playing different games. Domestic catfish processors are more exposed to a fillet-heavy product mix and to smaller regional scale, while Vietnamese pangasius processors benefit from very high throughput and broader co-product utilization. That difference helps explain why import competition matters to growers and processors at the same time.^3,10,11

Conclusion

The economics of siluriformes turn on where in the chain you stand. For growers, the core variables are feed, survival, acreage productivity, and access to processors. For processors, the core variables are yield, product mix, freezer inventory, and by-product monetization. Because Vietnam’s pangasius sector is large and export-driven, import competition shapes pricing and strategy on both sides of the U.S. market. Any policy or transparency analysis of catfish, basa, or swai works better when it starts from this commercial reality, not just from the label on the package.^1-11

Publishing Package

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Meta description: A publication-ready overview of the economics of raising and processing siluriformes, including U.S. catfish farming, processor margins, pangasius imports, and Vietnam’s competitive position.

Endnotes

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Catfish Production,” released Feb. 9, 2026.

2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “U.S. Seafood Imports Expand as Domestic Aquaculture Industry Repositions Itself,” Amber Waves, May 22, 2024.

3. Mississippi State University Extension, “Direct Revenues from Tariffs and Their Impacts on Prices of U.S. Catfish Imports,” Mississippi MarketMaker Newsletter, 2025.

4. Alabama Cooperative Extension System, “Outlook on Catfish Feed Prices,” July 17, 2025.

5. Mississippi State University Extension Service, “Catfish producers navigate challenges,” July 24, 2024, updated Aug. 8, 2025.

6. Morgan Christine Cheatham, “Economics and risk of catfish production strategies,” Mississippi State University dissertation abstract, 2024.

7. Shraddha Hegde et al., “Technological progress in the US catfish industry,” Journal of the World Aquaculture Society 53, no. 2 (2022).

8. Benedict C. Posadas, “Jobs, Incomes, and Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Seafood Processing Industry,” Mississippi MarketMaker Newsletter, Feb. 17, 2026.

9. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, “Economic contributions of the U.S. catfish industry,” publication summary, 2022.

10. David C. Love et al., “Fisheries and aquaculture by-products: Case studies in Norway, United States, and Vietnam,” Marine Policy 167 (2024).

11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, “Grain and Feed Quarterly – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,” Aug. 6, 2025.