Alabama Legislature approves $25K for marketing farmed shrimp

A special legislative session was called In Montgomery, Ala., to avert a state government shutdown. It ended Tuesday evening with negotiations over rabbits vs. shrimp.
Some senators wanted to fatten a spending bill to give the agriculture department an extra $100,000 from the General Fund this year to promote pond-grown shrimp and rabbit production in Alabama. Some members of the House of Representatives objected and wanted to erase the entire $100,000. They were suspicious that a few of the senators actually wanted the money for "pork" projects in their districts.
" This is not pork," Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, assured them. "It's shrimp."
He was walking around the Senate chambers wearing a black and white sign that said, "Got shrimp," a take-off from the "Got milk?" ad campaign. Sen. Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery, wore a sign that said, "Got rabbit."
The bargaining lasted hours after lawmakers passed next year's operating budget. The dispute involved whether to fatten an appropriations bill that Gov. Bob Riley said absolutely needed to be passed, which would spend about an extra $22.6 million this year, most of it going to prisons. Funding for shrimp and rabbits was part of that debate, along with $100,000 senators wanted to add for the forestry commission.
Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Glen Zorn told panel members that the rabbit industry in Alabama has grown from three to 346 producers in recent years. Panel member Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, who said he had rabbit producers in his district, offered to trim the Senate's $100,000 request to $50,000 for rabbit production and promotion and $25,000 for shrimp promotion.
But Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, who started out wanting to kill the entire $100,000, replied, "I like shrimp better than I like rabbit." He counterproposed $25,000 each for rabbits and shrimp, with the added requirement that state agriculture officials give lawmakers an itemization of how the money would be spent before it was spent. It was agreed that the spending bill for this year, fattened by $50,000 for shrimp and rabbits plus $100,000 for forestry to spend on volunteer fire departments and a nursery, was passed by the Legislature.
Knight said agreeing to spend a total of $50,000 on shrimp and rabbit promotion as part of bill that allocated $22.78 million seemed a small price to make sure the special session ended Tuesday night and didn't drag into Wednesday, at an added cost to taxpayers.
Associate Professor D. Allen Davis of Auburn University’s Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures said that farmers have spent the past few years working out kinks in shrimp production.
“ They can produce the shrimp,” Davis said. “Now it’s a question of branding that product.”
Alabama’s Green Prairie Aquafarm last year produced about 150,000 pounds of shrimp. Owner David Teichert-Coddington said the best way to get better prices for shrimp is direct marketing, but that involved a lot of legwork meeting with restaurants and grocery stores. Teichert-Coddington suggested that while the $25,000 won’t by much, it could be used to let people know that Alabama shrimp farmers exist.

Sources:
The Montgomery Advertiser
The Birmingham News