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Arkansas' market share as a global supplier of rice is declining, and farmers are struggling to break even.

This year has been so hard for Arkansas farmers that many have dropped out of the business altogether.

"There's a lot of people dropping out of the business. There's quite a few farmers in Arkansas in particular that decided to retire or get out or for whatever reason, this year, and after this year, there will probably be a whole lot more next year," said Jeff Rutledge, a rice farmer in Jackson County who holds the position of vice president of the Agricultural Council of Arkansas and serves on numerous state and federal agriculture and rice boards.

"As far as financial stress, it's the worst that I've seen since the mid-80s," said Keith Glover, chair of USA Rice and president and CEO of Producers Rice Mill in Stuttgart.

The price of American rice has plummeted 37 percent in the last year. Last May, it was around $19 per hundred pounds (hundredweight, or cwt), or $8.50 a bushel. This May, it hit a low of $12 cwt or $5.40 cents a bushel.

"At the $19 a hundredweight, Arkansas rice farmers should be able to make a nice profit on that. But at $12 a hundredweight, there's just no way rice farmers can survive," Glover told KATV.

We've previously reported on how severe weather this spring and sweeping tariffs have made this a fraught year for Arkansas farmers, but what may be a bigger issue is that farmers are struggling to compete in a global market flooded with incredibly cheap foreign rice that has diminished demand.

"It's been proven that the Indians subsidize their ag production well above what they're allowed under their World Trade Organization authority. The excess they're dumping on the world market, and it's trade-distorting and it has had a very negative impact on world rice prices," said Glover.

"We're held to such a high standard here on our production practices, what we're allowed to use for crop production, our labor costs, our machinery costs, our input costs. Everything is so much higher, and the cost of compliance for our practices is much higher than in other countries where, you know, they're allowed to spray things that have been banned here for decades and they can do it relatively cheap," said Rutledge.

It's going to take federal subsidies to keep Arkansas farmers in business. They're holding on until an updated and overdue Farm Bill is passed by U.S. Congress.

The existing Farm Bill, passed in 2014, has a subsidy safety net for farmers, but it's based on long-outdated commodity prices from 2012, and that's not going to save anybody now.

"We have to get a Farm Bill passed and we have to get it passed right now," said Glover.

Arkansas farmers are hopeful that an updated safety net will be included in President Trump’s 'big beautiful' budget reconciliation bill, which may help them survive until another Farm Bill is passed.

Source : msn