Many of our members participated in a survey last month to evaluate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our industry. Thanks to the hard work of Jonathan van Senten and Carole Engle (who did this work without financial support!), the results are in, and it’s not pretty.

The mollusk-related summaries for the 1st Quarter (March 23, 2020 to April 10, 2020) are available here:
Mollusks Quarter 1 Results / Mollusks Detailed Summary

While some of the responses that were used to guide the survey are now up to three weeks old, the impacts are sobering. 184 shellfish farms participated (thank you!) representing about 21% of the nation’s farms.

Asked whether their farm would survive the next three months without assistance only 24% answered yes.  98% reported lost sales, 42% have laid off workers and 24% more “will have to soon.”

There’s a huge volume of information here. They plan to repeat the exercise quarterly, so I encourage everyone to participate despite survey fatigue. This kind of data is gold when we talk to our congressional delegations.

Thanks to Paul Zajicek and the NAA for sharing these results.