COVID-19

Every year before Christmas, I go to a local grocery store to buy my sister a pocket-sized stuffed hamster dressed in holiday finery, such as reindeer antlers or a Santa Claus hat. (It’s a sister thing, plus we had...

Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was rewarding and fulfilling. Considering last year’s many challenges and achievements, I think we all certainly earned it. I spent much of the past few weeks reflecting on the year that...

New research estimates economic losses due to congestion, inefficiencies • By Ria DeBiase • Between wildfires, drought, a trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic, the last few years have been hard on California farmers. But recent research by agricultural economists from...

Winter production meetings, a long-running staple of the Cooperative Extension Service’s efforts to help Arkansas growers succeed from field prep to harvest, will again be in-person throughout the state in 2022. Production meetings provide an opportunity for agronomists, researchers and...

• By Vicky Boyd, Editor • Like much of America, the University of Arkansas’ Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center has experienced COVID-related supply chain disruptions, which shut down machine shop construction for six weeks this spring. The project appears back on...

The 2021 Rice Field Day is coming Aug. 20 to a device near you! The recent rise in COVID-19 cases around the state prompted the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture to move this year’s rice field day...

Texas rice grower Jacko Garrett continues to ‘share the harvest’ through his charitable efforts. • By Vicky Boyd, Editor • For more than three decades, Danbury, Texas, rice producer Jacko Garrett has been growing rice specifically to donate to the Houston Food...

Last year had unpredictable ups and downs. Unprecedented hurricane and fire seasons wracked both the South and Northern California, international shipping logistics have been disrupted and some of our largest foreign markets are still reeling from the impact of COVID-19. The...

In the song “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell sings, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” The COVID pandemic has reinforced this notion. Many things we used to take for granted,...

• By Jamison Cruce • The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the Pandemic Assistance for Producers (PAP) initiative that provides aid to agricultural producers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The $12 billion initiative contains four parts, including $4.5 billion in...

• By Kurt Guidry • As we head into planting season for the 2021 rice crop, the current cash rice market in Louisiana has remained supported in the $20 to $21 per-barrel range ($12.35 to $12.96 per hundredweight). A 500,000...

It seems like we spent a good portion of the past year counting the days until it would be over — and now it finally is. We’re turning the page on what by all accounts was a pretty terrible...

• By Kurt Guidry • Tight stocks and favorable demand have helped support rice prices for much of 2020, which saw a large increase in rice acres and the potential for drastically higher production and supply levels. Historically, this type...

Mississippi farmers generated an estimated agricultural value of $7.35 billion in 2020, a 5% increase from 2019 that saw soybeans top forestry for the No. 2 spot behind poultry. The predicted total ag value exceeds 2019’s production value of $7.01...

• By Kurt M. Guidry • Despite several challenges in 2020, the rice market has been resilient and has remained fairly stable. The first challenge was the large increase in acres in 2020, most of which were in long grain....