LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) - As you drive by the countless rice fields of Louisiana, have you ever considered their financial impact in the state?
Brandon Vail is a 5th-generation rice farmer and has been planting rice for 18 years. This will be his 26th harvest.
“Harvest went pretty well; the yields were average across the board for the most part. Milling has been kind of consistent with past years, so it hasn’t been too bad as far as yield and everything like that,” said Vail.
He says the problem this year is that the price is way down.
Last year, Vail was getting $25 a barrel for rice, and this harvest he’s down to $17 to $19 a barrel.
“A lot of it is other countries dumping rice into the U.S. market. You have India and Thailand as well as Vietnam and Pakistan that are really dumping a lot of rice into the U.S. market. 25% of the rice that’s consumed domestically is imported, and we can fill the entire demand. But it’s cheaper for some people to import rice than to use domestic rice.”
Vail says the cost of producing rice in other countries is low compared to the U.S.
“India, they finally put a 50% tariff on rice coming in from India at this point. I think Vietnam, Thailand, and Pakistan are all 19% to 21% on their tariffs on rice that’s coming in. But even so, with a 21% tariff, they can still send rice here and be several hundred dollars a ton cheaper than domestically produced rice.”
Jimmy Meaux with the LSU AG Center says the harvesting season started off well, but the weather became an issue.
“We got into some cooler temperatures and a lot of rain and heavy winds, like in March and April. And so a lot of the later-planted rice didn’t do quite as well. We had more disease pressure that got in it, and a lot of the heads just didn’t fill out. And the yield wasn’t as heavy as it has been,” according to Meaux.
Meaux says that with the dry weather recently, the next harvest could bring a bigger yield of rice crop.
According to the LSU AG Center, 459,000 acres of rice were harvested in Louisiana last year.
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