Will optimistic U.S. rice prices keep acreage up in key states like Arkansas, California, and Louisiana in 2024, or will a positive move in soybean returns encourage Delta and Midsouth growers to rotate to beans next year?

After two consecutive years of lower rice acreage, Arkansas farmers planted more than 1.4 million acres of rice in 2023. If typical trends hold, total acreage could decline in America’s largest rice state in 2024, according to Jarrod Hardke, rice Extension agronomist with the University of Arkansas.

Rice acreage in California surpassed 500,000 this year after the previous season, marred by severe drought, saw acreage there cut in half. Rice industry leaders in California said the season seems to have ended well, with good yields and quality.

Louisiana saw an 11% increase in rice acreage this year to just over 461,000, which like its neighbors, was marked by higher yields, but challenged quality due largely to weather factors, according to Ronnie Levy, rice specialist at the Louisiana State University Ag Center.

Questions remain, however, as Arkansas’ typical up-year, down-year cycle for rice acreage, and a significant improvement in medium grain plantings in Arkansas and California may have saturated medium grain markets.

Long vs. medium grain

California’s return to its high end of normal rice acreage this season put more medium grain product on the market as most of the rice grown there are medium grain varieties. Hardke told Farm Press at the annual USA Rice Outlook Conference that Arkansas, which tends to grow more than 1 million acres of long-grain varieties, planted more medium grain rice in 2022 to meet growing demand and the lack of acreage planted in California. Southern growers planted a similar amount of medium grain again in 2023 as those markets continued.

“There was a big market drive to have a lot more medium grain rice planted this past year,” Hardke said of Arkansas rice plantings. “So that’s the question: where do we go from here because California planted all of their acres back to medium grain, and then we planted close to our highest acres of medium grain ever.”

Questions remain for medium grain U.S. rice: was the demand built for those varieties over the past two years sufficient to consume the supplies generated in 2023 – will that supply be exhausted – or will there be a surplus of medium grain rice going into the next marketing year?

Hardke admits California’s medium grain marketing efforts differ from that of the Midsouth as California has well-established, specialty markets, and Arkansas rice tends to be moved through the commodity markets.

Crop rotations and markets

Hardke said Arkansas’s typical rotation from rice for one year to soybeans the next could be challenged by commodity prices. Rice returns last year were better than some, but not at record highs. Aiding this will be the cost of inputs, which are trending in the right direction, but are nowhere near their 2021 lows.

Input costs appear to be moderating, while the price outlook remains high, Hardke said in closing comments during his Arkansas state report at the USA Rice conference. Still, he has questions. Will the current fall 2023 rice bids of about $6.80 per bushel encourage more rice next year? What happens in soybeans may largely depend upon full ownership versus common share lease arrangements. “Profitability shifts in favor of soybeans in common share lease arrangements,” Hardke said.

Other rotational crops like corn and cotton may not fare well under current commodity pricing for rice and soybeans.

“Corn is not looking very good at the moment,” he said. “Neither is cotton.”