While the state, not to mention the entire nation, is experiencing a severe drought experts predict that food prices, as well as fuel prices, will increase due to their scarcity.

And while North Alabama may be the hardest hit by this bad climate wave, analysts say Dallas County will not have hardly any damage to its row crops — but that is because Dallas County hardly has any row crops (crops such as corn) at all in the area. But analysts say The Black Belt will still suffer from these price increases and bad climate conditions in areas like catfish sales and production.

Brett Hall, the deputy commissioner for the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, said the corn in the Midwest is literally burning because of the heat and dry soil.

“The Midwest in states like Indiana and Missouri, those are the hardest hit in this drought,” Hall said. “We in Alabama produce very little corn, but what we do have is almost gone.”

So what does corn production have to do with catfish? Hall said it means a great deal to those in the industry.

“Corn is part of the feed for catfish,” Hall said. “And if corn prices go up then the catfish feed prices go up too.”

And higher costs of producing catfish could mean a higher price per pound of fish when they are sold in markets. In the ever-constant battle in prices with Asian fish markets, that could be a hard hit to the industry.

Hall said he thinks the Black Belt will fair luckier than the other parts of the state in the drought because it is less intense here than in other parts receiving hardly any rainfall.

According to the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Catfish Producers, Alabama ranks second in national catfish production and sales producing well over 100 million pounds of catfish per year.

“Catfish are certainly one of the most important industries of agriculture to the Black Belt Region and the production is very dependent on water,” Rick Oates, Director of Alabama Catfish Producers said about the drought.

“As the water level decreases in a pond, it gets harder to keep oxygen in the water,” Oates said.

He said he has not heard about a struggle currently in the Alabama catfish market other than their usual competition with Asian markets, but said that if weather conditions were to worsen, then the catfish market would suffer.

“The drought could impact us but it is definitely not the biggest problem or issue,” Oates said.

A Farm Production Coordinator at Harvest Select Catfish in Uniontown, Garret Poe, said the drought will definitely increase the cost of production in catfish around the state.

“I would say the three main expenses in catfish farming are power for the ponds, fuel for transportation and feed,” Poe said.

He said that in a drought farmers have to turn the wells on to pump more water into the ponds. Farmers do this when there is a lack of rain as well as a heat wave. The electricity cost for pumping well water is very high.

Poe said at Harvest Select their ponds are full to the brim with water in this extreme heat.

“When you and I get hot we can go inside and cool off ,but catfish go deeper into the water to stay cool,” Poe said. “But when the water levels drop and the temperature is high the bottom of the pond is just as hot as the top.”

This is negative for the farmers because extreme heat damages the texture quality of the fish, making them mushy.

Feed is another expense for farmers. Currently for a Dallas County farmer to order one ton of feed from Mississippi it is $508 with shipping. Multiply that by 10,000 tons a year for one farmer and the cost of just feed is over $4 million.

If the price of corn were to increase because of the drought, farmers would see their feed prices change for the worst.

“As the economy gets worse it costs more to raise the fish,” Poe said. “Everyone I know is running on the bare minimum of labor right now. We have yet to see any of the negative side effects of the drought but we hope we don’t see any of that.”

Weather forecasters predict Selma and Dallas County will see several showers and thunderstorms over the course of the next few days.