EASTERN ARKANSAS — Jarrod Hardke, Rice Agronomist for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, said the state’s rice farmers are persistent despite the constant challenges in the industry.
“Certainly getting discouraged,” he said. “I don’t want to say poorest attitudes, but certainly one of the most concerned attitudes in my career going into the season. But, absolutely the we’re going to make this happen attitude that’s kind of the farming attitude. We’re going to do this. We’re going to make a crop. That’s what we do, but as this has continued to go on, you know this month it’s gotten worse, we certainly had a lot of growers exit this winter.
“This is setting us up to potentially be in a similar position going into this fall with commodity prices and now stacking difficulties here early on and making it harder to see how we make the crops that we really need to make this year given the economic situation,” Hardke added. “The perseverance is absolutely there for our growers as you would expect, but it’s certainly more and more difficult conversations each day that goes by at this point.”
Even with that, Arkansas leads the nation in the production of rice. East Arkansas has the top five rice producing counties in the state.
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