Belzoni, MS

Today, Belzoni, Miss., and Humphreys County also are known as the Catfish Capital of the World.

It used to be known as “Greasy Row” back in the 1800s, when it was little more than a short stretch of hardscrabble saloons along the banks of the Yazoo River. Others called it “the Dark Corner of Washington County,” a place with no official name, no local government, and no law enforcement.

By the time it became the seat of newly formed Humphreys County (the last to be formed in the state in 1918), it finally had a name—Belzoni—bestowed on it by a local plantation owner, Alvarez Fisk. Fisk was a great admirer of Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823), an Italian engineer, circus performer, and explorer of Egyptian antiquities.

Today, Belzoni, Miss., and Humphreys County also are known as the Catfish Capital of the World. It’s a quantifiable fact.

“We have more acres for catfish farming than any other county in the world,” says Belzoni Mayor Tom Turner. More than 40,000 acres are used for this aquacultural commodity (not to mention the 32,000 acres of catfish farms in neighboring Sunflower County). Catfish in this case are a crop like any other, farm-raised under stringent conditions in shallow, man-made ponds, processed, and shipped across the nation and around the world.

Catfish farming is a relatively new phenomenon to Belzoni (pop. 2,663), where for decades farmers had tried their hands at such crops as cotton and soybeans in the clay-heavy soil that comprised much of the Mississippi Delta land. “Farmers were really looking for a use for these soils that had such a high clay content that it was difficult to grow traditional crops,” says Jim Steeby, the area extension agent for aquaculture for Mississippi State University. All this available acreage, plus a deep aquifer descending at 150-180 feet across much of the area and a warm growing season of 180-220 days, made Humphreys County ideal for catfish farming, which began here in the 1960s.

“It’s not easy because it takes so much money, and there’s a lot of risk in it,” says Ed Nerren Jr., who farms 1,000 acres in Humphreys County on a catfish farm started by his father. It costs $1,300 to $1,800 an acre just to get a proper catfish farm started, and the fish must be fed high-protein floating pellets to give them a mild flavor with no “fishy” undertaste. The ponds also must be monitored constantly for water quality and dissolved oxygen levels during the warmer months of the year. “If the oxygen level gets low, you can easily lose $50,000 worth of fish in a night,” Nerren says.

But it’s worth the risk, according to Turner.

“It’s been a godsend for our area,” he says, noting the number of jobs the catfish farming industry has brought to Humphreys County. In addition to approximately 117 farms, many related industries sprang up to keep the farms going, such as feed mills, processing plants (which must be near the farms to keep expenses down), and net and container manufacturers.

The catfish business has even spawned a catfish museum in Belzoni commemorating the industry and its practices. Turner says visitors have come from as far as Europe since it was built in the early 1990s. The Catfish Institute, the nation’s trade organization for catfish farmers, makes its home in Belzoni as well, establishing national catfish-raising standards and sending recipes and pro-catfish messages across the globe.

Every year since 1976, the town has paid tribute to the whiskered fish with its World Catfish Festival—a day of celebration that culminates in a crowning of the Catfish Queen. Allison Bloodworth earned the crown last year, in part for a poem she wrote extolling her favorite fish’s virtues.

Bloodworth harbors a pleasure in her own catfish consumption: “I like it fried—that’s the way I’ve always eaten it,” she says. “Though I like it baked too, and it’s really more healthy baked.

“But it’s really good fried.”

Michael Depp is a regular contributor to American Profile.

Upload Your Own Stories, Photos and Videos

Every week, American Profile magazine brings you stories that celebrate the people and places that make America great. Now we want to hear your stories and see your photos, videos and even audio.

 Start Uploading Now!

 

Discuss this Article