AgFax Rice: Louisiana

By AgFax Media LLC, AgFax.com

OVERVIEW

In south Louisiana a few fields have reached green ring.

Rain is the dominate story this week in the Midsouth crop. A front moved through the region on Wednesday (4/26) and more rain is in the forecast starting on Friday and into the weekend.

If the forecasts play out, all that rain will delay pre-flood applications and any remaining rice planting, perhaps for 10 to 14 days. With recent slippage in rice prices, some growers in the Delta states may throw in the towel and plant soybeans once they can move into the field again.

Along with heavy rains in the forecast for the upper Delta, even heavier amounts of rain are predicted in the upper Mississippi River basin, which raises the prospects of river bottom flooding in parts of the Midsouth. See comments by Jarrod Hardke.

In Texas, rain also has delayed pre-flood applications in places over the last 2 weeks. "Some areas south of Houston received 9-plus inches of rain in 6 hours early last week," Horizon Ag's Michael Fruge reported in the company's weekly rice update report. "Other areas received over four inches...These rains did help farmers establish a flood on some of the earliest planted rice."

LOUISIANA CROP REPORTS

Dustin Harrell, Louisiana Rice Extension Specialist, LSU Rice Research Station, Crowley: "Rice planting has been moving along between showers in northeast Louisiana. No big rains have fallen (as of 4/26) but enough hit-or-miss showers developed to keep people out of the field in places for a couple of days.

"In south Louisiana things are moving fast. I've heard a couple of reports of fields reaching green ring. That's amazing. A big portion of south Louisiana's rice is flooded and more is going to flood every day. People are calling about drift problems here and there or red rice or weedy rice, although it's nothing major or statewide."