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This document outlines the state of market LMB grown for food in 2000. There has been some inflation since then of course. An excerpt:

Quote
All 103 suppliers of largemouth bass listed in the Aquaculture Magazine Buyer’s Guide ‘99 andIndustry Directory (Aquaculture Magazine 1999) were sent a letter that explained the purpose of thiswhite paper and requested information on what they felt were needed research areas. The majority didnot respond. Additional phone contacts were made with known producers. In all, feedback wasobtained from 20 private producers and managers of two state hatcheries. These aquaculturists werelocated in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma,Pennsylvania, Texas, and France. The wholesale values of fingerling largemouth bass depend uponsize, geographic location, and the number sold to the customer. Mean value from this survey forfingerlings sold in small lots, excluding the much higher values given for Maine, New York, andPennsylvania are 1–2 in $0.35, 2–4 in $0.68, 4–6 in $0.94, 6–8 in $2.07, and 8–10 in $3.74. Thesales price for large lots may be discounted 50%. Largemouth bass sold live to the Asian market sellfor $3.00–$5.00/lb. Largemouth bass are being sold to the pay-fishing market for $6.00/lb.A number of fish culturists indicated that they couldn’t produce sufficient quantities of 8 in andlarger largemouth bass to meet the demand. The demand for smaller fingerlings would increase if thenatural resource agencies stopped producing largemouth bass. Many private state aquacultureassociations have tried with little success to get their natural resource agency to phase out largemouthbass production. Tidwell et al. (In press) stated that the demand for largemouth bass greater than 1.0lb has been identified to exceed 700,000 lb/yr with a value of over $3.00/lb live weight. Tidwell et al.(In press) made the following cost estimates; production estimates for an economic engineeringapproach were taken from research results at Kentucky State University. Cost estimates were basedon numbers generated for a catfish production system composed of 4, 5-acre ponds under Kentuckyconditions. Based on a stocker price of $0.50 per feed trained fingerling, a yield of 4,350 lb/acre, anda selling price of $3.00/lb (live sales) approximately $12,750/acre gross revenues are generated whichallows a return of $6,623/acre above variable costs and $5,950 after operator labor. A break-evenestimate under these assumptions would be $1.60/lb.Until these higher yields have been routinely demonstrated for large ponds, it is recommended thatcost estimates be based on 1,500–2,000 lb of production/acre.


It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers