By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

OKEMOS, Mich. — With the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, reports are popping up in different places about seafood price increases, which certainly seems natural.

Yet, according to Russ Allen, owner of Seafood Systems, Inc. in the southwestern portion of Michigan, most shrimp Americans eat are brought in from overseas, not the Gulf. He said he’s seen prices for shrimp increase 20-30 percent over the past two weeks, but not from a lack of supply.

“It’s made some major changes in the marketplace, but probably for all the wrong reasons,” Allen said. “Speculation is purely what it is.”

Two hundred million pounds of shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico are consumed here in the United States, out of 1.5 billion pounds total in a given year. Allen noted that he hasn’t changed his prices at all. He raises 300-400 pounds of shrimp a week; a paltry amount, according to him. He’s been involved in aquaculture in Michigan for several decades.

Kevin Dean, a manager at the Superior Fish Co. in Royal Oak, Mich., says his prices for seafood have risen, but only a little so far. His company, which is both a retailer and wholesaler, does buy seafood from businesses in the Gulf, but he said the harvest of the type of seafood he buys there hasn’t even yet happened.

“There was a slight price increase because of what’s happening in the Gulf,” Dean said. “A lot of people are taking advantage; of course they’re speculating, just like any other commodity.”
Dean said oysters, clams and mussels prices might be trending up because more people are competing for these products from businesses on the East Coast. Although he hasn’t raised his prices, Allen said there might be an indirect benefit to him as a result of the Gulf oil spill.

“Potential investors have seen the potential fragility of shrimp grown in the wild,” he said.

Allen has developed a proprietary technology to raise shrimp, which he says allows him to raise them for less than what it costs to import the product from China.

“My system is designed to work on a commodity scale,” he said. “We can grow shrimp cheaper here than they can in China. Tell me, what other industry can do that? There’s nobody else in the world using this technology.”

Right now he’s working with state officials from Ohio to help him with funding so he can “scale up” the technology. “There’s little if any help at all coming from the state of Michigan,” he said. “Michigan is pretty much out of it. She does everything she can to make things worse for agriculture in Michigan.”

“She” is Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Allen believes Granholm’s lack of support for agriculture may be political – namely, that she may figure everyone in agriculture is a Republican, and she’s a Democrat, so therefore agriculture doesn’t get her support.

He said his he hopes his discussions with people in Ohio help move the aquaculture industry forward.