The Arkansas rice crop took off with an interesting start in 2023. Planting progress escalated at an intense pace. The weather went a little haywire. Then planted acreage became a challenge to forecast before taking the upside at 1.41 total million rice acres. 

In the end, some farmers walked away from the season with their best rice yields ever. Others experienced more variability. It all depended on location and the way the wind blew, literally. 

Jarrod Hardke, Extension rice agronomist at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, weighed in on the triumphs and the anomalies of the season. He said, “From a general standpoint, we have a very good-looking 2023 rice crop. Yields came in great. While milling is down tremendously, peck numbers from stinkbug and other damage are very low, and chalk is relatively low.” 

With those gains and a handful of variabilities, Hardke anticipates the 2023 rice crop to take second place for the Arkansas state average yield, coming in just behind the record-breaking crop in 2021. 

Full tilt planting 

Planting season kicked off full throttle in 2023. Hardke said much of that was due to the dry fall conditions in 2022 and the tremendous advance in field preparation. Considering the heightened rainfall received this past March and April, that field prep was highly beneficial. 

Related:Rice milling: Much to mull over in 2023

Hardke said, “From my notes, by the end of April, we were at the second highest rainfall received on record for that time of year since 1882. The upside was a lot of ground was ready to plant from the dry fall. Once the ground dried, a lot of it was ready to go and that facilitated the big, early jump in planting.” 

He noted that location mattered, because some pockets in the state – particularly in northeast Arkansas – got the windows needed for extreme early planting in late March and early April. 

Planting progress certainly set the year apart. Hardke recalled, “We were planting everything so fast – corn, rice, and beans – that it was difficult to estimate. I do not feel that the official planting progress numbers quite reflected what was real for rice. 

“Normally, when you think of historical estimations, you may have a little overlap between crops, but it is more of an evolution. You have corn being planted that gives way to rice being planted, that gives way to beans being planted. That’s just not true anymore and it absolutely was not true in 2023,” he said. 

Adversities and anomalies 

Early in the year, farmers felt good about planting. Then the weather shifted, and April concluded with a cold, wet rainy period. Hardke said rice planted just before this rainy window suffered the most during the season.  

Related:Storms hit Arkansas rice

“The rice that was planted in mid-April struggled mightily. It seemed to have lost vigor and never really regained as the season went on,” he reported. 

By the beginning of May, the skies cleared, and farmers were back to planting under great conditions. Then a huge oddity blew into the picture as the rice crop endured four to six weeks of a north-northeast wind. 

The wind lasted from May into June, and Hardke said the dry conditions contributed to plant stress and ultimately impacted the effectiveness of herbicide applications.  

“Because both the rice plants and weeds were stressed from the dry north wind, it created a lot of problems,” Hardke explained. “We dealt with more crop injury and drift events than we had seen in quite some time during that window.” 

Despite the rain and the wind, the crop still looked great. As farmers began pushing everything to flood in June, it was evident the planted acreage was also pushing higher than expected. 

“There was no doubt that number was climbing,” Hardke said. “Winter expectation was somewhere around 1.3 million planted acres with upside. Those early planting windows along with the one window we caught into May turned that upside into a fair amount, and we ended up north of 1.4 million acres planted.” 

The summer rocked on with high nighttime temperatures. Farmers were fortunate to get a few breaks with rainfall, then another cool, wet rainy period developed in July that lasted about 10 days. 

“It was a mixed blessing that kind of threw everybody for a loop. It was cool and mild, and the rainfall allowed us to stop irrigating not just rice, but all the crops for a little while. The downside was the worst possible timing for disease onset, and sheath blight really took off,” Hardke noted. 

On the other hand, stinkbug numbers were low as farmers advanced toward harvest. “We must have gotten out of cycle with the stinkbugs. That is our best guess,” he added. “Certainly, applications had to be made, but they weren’t that severe for most of the acreage.”  

Harvest as it relates to planting 

Similar to planting, harvest kicked off full-speed ahead. Overall, Hardke reported great rice yields, but he noticed a saddleback effect caused by weather swings throughout the season.  

He explained that rice planted through late-March and early-April had notably great yields. However, mid-April planted rice saw a yield drag, then yield picked back up for the rice planted in early May. 

To throw in another oddity, some of this variability was due to disease management issues caused by potassium deficiency. Hardke said, “On some of these wetter years, we do occasionally see a little more issue with potassium uptake and plant health related to that. This seemed to be another one of those years.” 

The weather was not the only source of variability. It was also due to the higher rice acreage in 2023 that brough in ground outside of the typical rotation where it is less likely to achieve a high-yielding rice crop. 

In relation to acreage, another element worth noting was the incredible shift in market demand that doubled the Arkansas medium-grain rice acres in 2023 from the year before. 

“We planted right up to 200,000 acres of medium-grain rice this year. I have no idea what that holds for 2024. Historically speaking, we typically have two consecutively high medium-grain years before it drops back down. Based on that, acreage could be up again next year depending on where the market stands,” Hardke speculated. 

As for the long-grain rice outlook, he is in the early stages of analyzing estimates for 2024. While it may be an interesting shuffle, Hardke does not expect a wide swing for rice acreage next year. 

“Comparatively, rice prices look pretty good at the moment, and I don’t think we will see as much of a drop. Based on that, I would not be surprised if we stay in that 1.3-million-acre range for this coming year.”