This space is generally provided to wrap-up the season and reflect on the attributes that aided production as well as the many setbacks that were encountered and eventually overcome on our way to producing the 2020 crop. I find it very difficult to collect my thoughts on what was a very different year for multiple reasons, mostly since this will ... Read More »
• By Bruce Schultz • The harvest for the 2020 rice crop in south Louisiana is nearing the halfway point, and the result is a big improvement over a string of bad to mediocre years. “If these yields hold out, I believe it would tie the second-highest-yielding year, and it still has the potential to be a record if the ... Read More »
Rice harvest is approaching in the Mississippi Delta, and early signs point to good yields in 2020. Bobby Golden, rice specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service and an assistant professor with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, said the condition of the state’s estimated 150,000 acres of rice looks “very good” as growers prepare to fill their ... Read More »
After a mild weekend of sunny skies and temperatures in the high 50s, much of Arkansas found itself dealing with widespread rains and falling mercury throughout Monday. Tuesday, Nov. 12, the state awoke to a morning that declared itself as “winter” in no uncertain terms. The National Weather Service described Little Rock’s post-sunrise temperature as “22, feels like 9” degrees ... Read More »
• By Ching Lee • If early harvest results are any indication of things to come, California rice farmers say they should have a decent crop this year with good market conditions to match. Except for the late May rains that caused delays in planting for many growers, Colusa County farmer Don Traynham said the “very mild, good growing season” ... Read More »
• By Bruce Schultz • Farmers probably would like to forget the 2019 rice crop, which has been plagued by low yields. Bad weather from the start of the growing season through harvest is being blamed. “Growing conditions have been less than ideal,” said Louisiana State University AgCenter rice specialist Dustin Harrell. “We didn’t have good conditions at any one ... Read More »
After a bruising 2017, in which substantial spring flooding cost growers in the state an estimated $175 million in lost production and damaged acreage, rice growers saw higher production in 2018 than in any of the three previous years, according to an April 4 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report, published by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics ... Read More »
Even if the fall of 2018 marked the “harvest that never ended,” Arkansas growers managed to pull enough rice from the land to mark a 30 percent increase over 2017’s disastrous numbers, which reflected the severe spring flooding of that year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service recently released state-by-state crop and stock reports, the first new ... Read More »
Record grain yields were last achieved in Louisiana during the 2014 growing season when we were blessed with very favorable weather conditions. Until 2018, each crop since 2014 had been successively lower yielding than the year before. Louisiana saw constant rainfall and cloudy conditions nearly the entire rice growth period in 2015. In 2016, record flooding occurred when more than ... Read More »
Louisiana festival mixes rice farming’s conservation story with birding Read More »
Rice Farming A One Grower Publication