Rain At Harvest A Minor Inconvenience For Rice, But Milling Quality Still The Chief Concern

RYAN MCGEENEY

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

While late September rain may have set Arkansas’ rice harvest back a couple of days, it didn’t wash away the concerns farmers have for the milling quality of their grain.

 “Rains at this point are just a minor slowdown,” said Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the Division of Agriculture. “For most farmers, it’s just going to mean two or three days out of the field. We’ve been relatively dry here for a while, so we’re able to handle a little bit more rain.”

Vast portions of Arkansas received between 1 and 2 inches of rainfall during the final week of September, with some isolated areas receiving more. El Dorado, Arkansas, for example, received a record 4.71 inches on Sept. 24. However, with 79 percent of the state’s rice acreage harvested as of Sept. 28, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a few days’ delay won’t hurt anything, Hardke said.

Growers were fortunate in that the late-September storms did not bring high winds with them, Hardke said.

“Our biggest fear this time of year is high winds, which can lead to lodging,” he said.

Still facing milling woes

Despite a fast-paced harvest season, Arkansas rice growers are still reporting problematic milling yields, the same thing that cut into 2024 profits. While growers report better milling yields this year, Hardke said they’re still falling short of the industry standard, with whole kernel yields coming in at about 52 percent.

“The industry standard for milling yield is 55/70, which means that of the rice we grow in the field, 55 percent of that grain is milled to a whole grain, and 70 percent of the overall yield can be milled to a combination of whole grains and broken grains,” Hardke said. In 2024, the unofficial state milling yield average was estimated at 48/69.

Like most commodities, rice production is being squeezed by global economic forces.

“We’re importing record amounts of rice into the country and not exporting the volume of rice we typically do,” Hardke said. “The global dynamics are at odds with the U.S. rice industry right now.”

Fewer rice acres in 2026

Hardke said that everything points to a reduction in U.S. rice acreage in 2026. Most growers, he said, already employ a two- or three-way rotation of rice, soybeans and corn, so many growers will likely shift a substantial amount of acreage toward the latter two grains.   ∆

RYAN MCGEENEY

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS