In the second half of the 20th century, eager investors, from city slickers to country folks, and others poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the southern United States to build catfish farms, processing plants, and infrastructure.
Mississippi native Mike McCall, 25-year editor of The Catfish Journal, compiled the history and will introduce readers to his new book, “Catfish Days – From Belzoni to the Big Apple,” at a signing Thursday, March 23 in Starkville.
Raising catfish, likened to the California Gold Rush of a century earlier, was seen as a panacea for a down economy — even easy money. Farmers and corporations built and stocked more than 180,000 acres of catfish ponds across the South, as an obliging news media served up the feel-good story like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Catfish Days” covers the catfish farming industry’s rough and tumble early years in Alabama’s Black Belt, before pushing into the rich Mississippi Delta, and beyond.
Along the way, a colorful cast of characters, celebrities and politicians emerged to bask in the heyday, then quietly slipped away when shiploads of cheap, imported fish from Asia reached U.S. shores and dominated the market. Almost overnight, an industry was in full retreat, taking with it thousands of jobs from the South’s poorest regions.
McCall, a veteran newspaper reporter and editor who now lives in Point Clear, Alabama, will sign first edition copies of his nonfiction account “Catfish Days” on March 23 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at BookMart, located at 120 E. Main St. in Starkville.
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