A distinctive red barn stands in the middle of a corn field in rural Indiana. But what it produces may surprise you.
“I never would have thought in a million years that we’d be selling so much shrimp here,” says Karlania Brown, co-owner of the restaurant. RDM Shrimp.
Behind the reception and retail store on his farm, there are two huge and humid rooms filled with saltwater tanks: a nursery for the baby shrimp, and an adjacent barn for when they grow up.
Every 25 days, Brown receives about 50,000 baby shrimp from hatcheries in Florida or Texas.
It takes five months to develop these to market size and sell directly to customers.
The key to keeping them alive? “It’s all about the water. That’s why we do nine tests a day on our tanks,” he said.
In 2010, when Brown and her husband first ventured into indoor shrimp farming, there were only two other similar operations in the entire country.
Today you’ll find about 20 – and the Browns helped start half of them.
“We need to source more so that we can be more sustainable and get a much better product than what we’re actually eating,” Brown said.
The US imports about 90% of its seafood from abroad, but scientists believe concerns over overfishing and increasing “food miles” could help boost the aquaculture industry in the US.
“This is potentially one of the components of our future food supply,” said Paul Brown, professor of aquaculture and aquaponics at Purdue University.
Plus, Karlania Brown says her product, which doesn’t contain hormones or antibiotics, tastes much better. “Once you know what real shrimp taste like, you’ll really fall in love with shrimp,” she says.
She sells about 500 pounds of shrimp per month. And because her customers can’t get enough of her products, she plans to soon build a new barn with 24 new production tanks.
“I’m in the middle of nowhere and people drive an average of 2 hours to get our product,” Brown said.
It turns out that rural Indiana or, as Brown puts it, “the middle of nowhere,” is as good a place as any other to raise and sell shrimp.