AN ANALYSIS OF POND RAISED CATFISH PRODUCTION IN TEXAS

SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1973AN ANALYSIS OF POND RAISED CATFISH PRODUCTION IN TEXASRonald D. Lacewell, John P. Nichols, T. Harold Jambers, Jr.INTRODUCTION provide production data for Texas catfish producersMany farm operators strive to increase and similar to that available for other Southern states andstabilize the net returns of their farming operation. to provide implications relative to efficiency ofThe opportunity to affect annual net returns may lie resource use [4].in the reorganization of products and inputs, firmgrowth and introduction of non-traditional PROCEDUREenterprises. There has been considerable research onreorganization and firm growth. However, since new A list of producers was developed from stateenterprises adaptable to a farm firm organization are license lists and association lists to provide a basis foroften based on technological innovations, economic surveying the industry. Every producer included onresearch usually lags behind for these new enterprises, the list was contacted by telephone to establish theThis implies some farm operators may become basic characteristics of the operation. Also, in thisinvolved in a non-traditional farm enterprise before way, names appearing on the list that were notthe economic status of the enterprise is established, engaged in commercial production of catfish duringOne of the more popular new enterprises 1971 could be identified and deleted.adaptable to a farm firm that has recently emerged is Expanding from the data developed in thefish farming. For example, with exceptionally telephone survey, extensive production data for eachencouraging preliminary reports on the profitability commercial producer in Texas was obtained throughof catfish production, many farm operators entered personal enumeration. The production questionnairethe industry. Catfish production is characterized by contained detailed questions concerning all phases ofmany problems typical of a developing industry, the 1971 production of catfish. These data were usedProducers have entered the industry with little factual in budgeting analysis to establish typical capital andknowledge about production costs, expected output, labor use for alternative Texas regions and sizeproduction system options, capital and labor categories. In addition, regression analysis wasrequirements, strength and nature of demand or the applied to the 1971 producer data to estimate aproblems of marketing. Therefore, there is a need to production function.establish production characteristics and marketing The production function aggregated allimplications for pond raised catfish. Studies focused investments into one capital item. To evaluate theon these questions have been completed relating to productivity of capital, an annual cost for a typicalthe industry in several Southern states but not for dollar of capital was estimated. This annual cost wasTexas [1, 2, 3, 6].' In addition, the question of $0.121 per dollar and included opportunity cost ofefficiency of resource use was not examined in these capital at 7 percent, a risk inclusion placed at 2other analyses. The purpose of this paper is to percent and depreciation averaged over all items