In Stops And Starts, Arkansas Rice Planting Advances

RYAN MCGEENEY

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

Every growing season brings its own unique challenges to Arkansas farmers, and the spring of 2025 is no exception.

By the time the massive storm system of early April swept across Arkansas, the state’s growers had already planted at least 15 percent of the state’s estimated 1.4 million planned acres of rice. The storm’s associated rainfall – more than 10 inches in some areas – and the flooding that followed wiped out an approximated 50,000 acres of that early planted rice.

While Arkansas farmers are no strangers to replanting after such a setback, the subsequent, near-weekly rain events over the following month have made the effort extraordinarily slow going, said Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

“We’re in this cycle of getting rain every seven days or so,” Hardke said. “That makes it impossible, even on our lighter-draining soils, to get any planting done. If you get a 1-inch rain on Monday, it’s going to be potentially four to five days before it’s dry enough to do anything.

“Maybe you get one or two days to work before the next rain event,” he said. “It takes a lot of effort to get geared up to roll. You waste half of the first day trying to get in gear, and half the second day trying to wind down and get to a stopping point.”

Hardke said that in addition to the 50,000 acres of lost planting, a similar number of acres will require some degree of levee repair as well.

“There’s also the matter of acres under water that hadn’t been planted yet,” Hardke said.

“It’s a bigger impact than we know yet.”

Herbicide impacts
The intermittent rain events have also impacted the effectiveness of the residual herbicides growers typically use to control weeds during this part of the season.

“Residuals did so well last year because we kept getting these small rains – about every five to seven days for six weeks, reactivating the chemicals without washing them away,” Hardke said. “But this year it’s just been heavy rains. It’s a different situation, and we’re struggling with slower rice emergence and some weeds breaking through.”

Keeping what we’ve got

The limited supply of long-grain rice seed has affected growers’ efforts to plant or replant, Hardke said.

“We’ve still been struggling with progress and uniformity of a lot of that rice,” he said. “We’re looking at keeping a lot of stands that are poorer than what we’d typically keep, partly because of the weather and partly because of the seed supply situation. Given the right weather and better seed availability, we might’ve done more replanting. But given the situation we’re in, we’re keeping what we’ve got and doing the best we can.”   ∆

RYAN MCGEENEY: University of Arkansas