Teche Valley Seafood

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Our Story

So you love crawfish huh? Yea we love it too, but maybe just all more than y’all think! Have y’all ever wondered where all the delicious mudbugs come from that flood into Louisiana during the spring and summer season and the people who make it all happen? Some people has had crawfish at a southern style restaurant. While others has eaten it from someone who’s well versed in the art of cooking these amazing little home grown treats as a professional boiler. However, most locals have had them at a house boil where countless people from Louisiana gather around a pot and tables with friends and family on a gorgeous weekend afternoon each season even know the process and labor intensive work that goes into providing the highest quality crawfish on the market today.

Well this story started a long time ago back when the practices of commercial crawfish farming was relatively new to the state and back country of cajun land. Crawfish wasn't a popular crop back then and only a few retailers and establishments actually served boiled crawfish, nor live for that matter, and the education of general public on how to cook, peel, and eat crawfish was fairly new and massive undertaking for the market. In 1983, Marin Durand, the father of 9 set out to deliver his dream to his wife, young children, and a fast growing industry to farm the best product that the bayous and marsh lands of central Louisiana can produce; to create a healthy, sustainable, multi-crop crawfish and rice farm. We can sit back now and say to ourselves, yea I would have done the same in his position, but most don't understand the huge gamble venturing out into this undeveloped and uncharted industry would have been in the early 80’s.

Starting with a couple dozen acres, Marin began his new career as sort of a side project for his boys to create work ethic, discipline, and provide an income for them to finish up school and attend college. This quickly grew to a multi-pond, a couple hundred acres worth of crawfish and rice ponds as his children became master farmers by trade and rose to the top of the industry, while providing an excellent yield of crawfish and growing the cleanest rice being farmed in Louisiana. With all hands on deck, his 6 sons, 3 daughters, and wife, Joanna Durand, became a team that competed with the largest commercial farms in the area and quickly started developing other products to deliver to the marketplace. Durand Farms & Ponds fished the crawfish, while Teche Valley Seafood Inc. distributes live, boiled, and peeled meat to bring to supermarkets and restaurants. The crawfish caught was also developed into a blend of crawfish puree to enhance the flavor in tasty southern crawfish dishes.

Over the past couple years, with the passing of both parents, the farm has operated by most of the children. Jeff Durand; master farmer and head of the US Rice Board, has assumed responsibility with the help of his brother CJ Durand, master farmer and all around tradesman, now operate and farm over 1800 acres of farm land cycling crawfish and rice ponds throughout the year. Greg Durand, master farmer, is the head of operations on the crawfish farming side of the business as well as controls the rotation of ponds and crews that fish these massive land locked water ways. Danny Durand, master farmer, is responsible for his own several ponds on the back end of this huge chunk of land. Together, with the help of some hard working guys, has farm hundred of thousands of pounds of crawfish each season. When the harvest of mudbugs end they move all efforts over to the rice farming activities in the hot summer sun of the Deep South, working 6 days a week year round.

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