The planting season for the rice crop in the state of Arkansas got off to a roaring start. Then, the rains and floods came.

“We are technically pretty far into planting progress. You’d call it north of 70 percent at this point. Certainly that sounds great when we’re not even to May,” said Jarrod Hardke, rice agronomist for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. “We started off the latter part of March there with a drier window and it seemed like we were getting an early jump. Similar, maybe not quite as fast, but similar to last year which was an incredible early planting progress.

“We ran right into the 12, 15 inches of rain to open the month of April,” he added. “Obviously, the flooding and the standstill for the majority of the state and flooding damage, crop loss of what had been planted. Obviously, I’m focused on rice but certainly we had plenty of corn and soybeans planted as well at at that time that were impacted.

Hardke said the weather has prevented any consistency with the state’s rice crop.

“It rains here, doesn’t rain there. Coming through all these events and trying to put the crop in the ground and get it to a stand. We’re back and forth between fields going underwater or drying out and getting wind blown and crusting over so we can’t get the crop out of the ground. The flooding event definitely leading to some replanting of rice plants. You know, rice tolerates flooded conditions better than most other crops, but not at the right time. Not on the too early, so things that went underwater and stayed underwater for quite awhile, 10 days or so early after that flooding event, they have significant issues. Some of other fields it got off of pretty quick, but then crusted and all that. We’ve got a pretty good amalgamation of replant potential needs. We’re definitely going to live with some lower stands than what are ideal because, frankly, we can’t get the conditions to even do the replant. It will get almost dry enough and then it rains again.”

Arkansas leads the nation in rice production, with the top five counties in rice production located in Eastern Arkansas.

Source - https://www.stuttgartdailyleader.com