ABBIEVILLE - You may see some significant changes in crawfish prices this season. It's because some crawfish processing plants are dealing with worker shortages.

"They simply cannot get their workers, and so some of the plants that normally get 100 to 135 workers have gotten zero," Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Mike Strain, said.

That's the case for Don Benoit, owner of D and T Crawfish, a processing plant in Abbeville, Louisiana. Typically, he says he gets his workers through the H-2 B work visa program. This year, the number of applicants exceeded the cap.

Benoit says he applied for 80 workers this year through the program, and as of now, he says he only has a handful of local workers.

"Last year, we had 60 employees, and we ran 1.5 million pounds through the facility. So, essentially, we were hoping to do about 2 million, I guess, whatever it came to with the extra 30 workers; essentially, we will not be able to buy that product," Benoit said.

An average day for a worker at a processing plant includes washing, cooking, sorting, and peeling crawfish, before packing them up for freezing.

Benoit says this is the first time he has had an issue getting workers.

"With the peak of the season, you have a big influx of work, so you need the extra labor to come in. It's a short time, you know about 3 months, so you have the extra work, you have to have the extra labor in order to do what you're doing," he said.

If Benoit doesn't have any by early next month. He says he will not be able to operate his processing plant and will lose about 45% of his crawfish income.

"In some way, we have to be guaranteed workers. These processing facilities are big investments for all of us, and not to have your workers, you have all this investment sitting there, and not to have the workers is just not sustainable," Benoit said.

Strain says he's been in contact with federal officials about the cap on visas, but he says he has not received an appropriate answer as to why this is the case. Strain says there needs to be some type of amendment on the budget reconciliation bill that would allow the additional workers.