Southern New Mexico shrimp franchise sells shrimp after researching cotton

A shrimp farm in southern New Mexico is not something you’d expect.

But an assistant director of farm operations at New Mexico State University says there’s a high demand for the sea critters in Las Cruces.

Tracey Carrillo started out researching cotton at NMSU, which he eventually turned into a feed for shrimp.

He said he never expected that research to turn into an entire shrimp franchise.

Carrillo tells ABC-7 that after his research with the shrimp was over, he would sell them.

He said there was such a high demand for the shrimp that he created his own business — the New Mexico Shrimp Company.

When ABC-7 visited the facility in October, they were only small, tadpole shrimp.

They have since gotten much bigger and will be ready to harvest in January.

He said they will be sold mainly to restaurants across Las Cruces and other parts of the country.

“In selling the shrimp at the end of a study, they became so popular that we started exploring could this be a commercial venture,” Carrillo said. “We collected data over the course of a couple years, ran different scenarios and business models and this is how that whole project evolved into a commercial industry,”