Arkansas’ rice harvest down
At midpoint, 2015 crop expected to drop 10% from last year’s yield.
The 2015 Arkansas rice harvest is about half over, and industry experts said this week they expect yields to decline from last year’s record performance.
“It’s been far from the yield we would like to see,” said Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Hardke said he expects average rice yields statewide to decline between 5 percent and 10 percent, from 168 bushels per acre in 2014 to about 155 bushels in 2015.
Hardke said he had initially expected a statewide drop of between 10 percent and 15 percent. As the harvest progressed, however, he said that production improved on farms north of Interstate 40, raising the expected statewide average.
He noted that yields vary by location and rice variety, and he said individual growers could get sharply varied results.
Joe Christian, who planted 1,450 acres of long-grain rice near Cash in Craighead County, was among the North Arkansas farmers who had not seen improvement.
“It’s terrible,” he said of his yield.
Christian said hybrid varieties that should yield 200 bushels per acre were yielding only 185, while conventional varieties that ought to produce 170 bushels per acre were yielding closer to 140.
Hardke attributed much of the decline to a rough grow-
ing season.
Planting was delayed by cold, wet weather that extended through May, he said. Some farmers were able to plant during brief periods in March and early April, he said, but most probably put in their rice between late April and late May. The entire crop was not in the ground until June, Hardke said.
Farmers then saw their rice stressed by a cold snap that was followed by extreme heat, he said.
Arkansas rice grows best when temperatures range between 90 degrees during the day and 70 degrees at night, he said.
“If it’s hot to you, it’s hot to rice,” Hardke said. “We like it warm but we don’t like it scalding, and neither does rice.”
The state’s total rice acreage also declined in 2015.
Scott Stiles, an extension economist, said May’s rice futures prices were $4.40 per bushel, the lowest they had been since July 2010, and that probably led farmers to devote fewer acres to rice.
Arkansas farmers planted about 1.1. million acres of long-grain rice, by far the most common type in the state, during 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was down from almost 1.3 million acres in 2014, the USDA said.
Rice futures have risen since May and closed Friday at about $5.48 per bushel, excluding transportation and storage costs, Stiles said.
Christian, a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau Board, said that price wasn’t sustainable because it costs more than $6 to produce a bushel of rice.
“I wouldn’t doubt we’ll lose more farmers,” he said, predicting “a long, cold winter in the rice industry.”
U.S. rice producers are expected to gain access to China later this year, and they hope to win permission to export their crop to Cuba as relations between that country and the U.S. improve.
Hardke said he expected the Arkansas rice harvest would wrap up in mid-October.