Arkansas Rice Update 5-2-25

by Jarrod Hardke, Rice Extension Agronomist - May 2, 2025

Arkansas Rice Update 2025-07

May 2, 2025

Jarrod Hardke, Scott Stiles, & Bob Scott

“I’ve been warped by the rain.”

To Trudge

“You know, trudging?  To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on.”

A sound bite making the rounds on social media:  “We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.  We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”

The latest extended forecast (Fig. 1) appears as though it will have us trudging; and doing nothing.  As of Wednesday night (4/30), next week looked as though it would have some openings for progress but by Thursday morning that had all changed with a pivot toward more rain, and potentially heavy rain.

Monday’s (4/29) planting progress report had us surging to 68% planted (Fig. 2).  The current weather outlook is a major hit against continued progress for the ~30% of acres remaining to be planted.  Progress may start trending upward based on decreasing intentions of continued planting especially if these rains add up.

While we have discussed plenty of our struggles with early planted rice, more recently planted rice has been doing very well.  In case you were curious, using Stuttgart weather data since 1983, we accumulated more DD50 units from April 16-30 this year than any other year.  And we accumulated more DD50 units from April 1-30 than all years other than 2006.  So that’s why we’re off the races so much better with rice planted post April 2-5 flooding.  And why we even have some rice heading to flood early (Fig. 3).

Read on below for more information on herbicide selection, quinclorac products, rice markets, and text message service.

Let us know if we can help.

**DD50 Rice Management Program is live!  To enroll fields:  https://dd50.uada.edu/ **

Fig. 1.  NOAA 7-day precipitation forecast.

Fig. 2.  Arkansas rice planting progress as of 4-27-25 (USDA-NASS).

Fig. 3.  Rice fertilized to go to flood April 30 (h/t Andrew Jackson).

Bobbing and Weeding

Bob Scott

Does anyone remember Stam it and forget it?  How about Stam every Monday til it’s clean?  Ok, how about when Clearfield first came out and you could just make two shots and flood.  I do remember and it was nice!  Not the case for most growers today, weed resistance across the board to multiple species have seen to that.  All this resistance has forced us to rely more heavily on residual products and overlapping those residuals.

I have been taking a few calls this week on some fields where no residuals were put out for various reasons, it is important to try and catch those fields up as soon as possible by making an early POST residual application along with whatever POST herbicides you are using.  Lots of Command and Prowl are going out on 1-3 leaf rice, some Facet as well.  Watch out for fields with plants that have exposed roots where we have had all this rain.  Also, for most of these we recommend, or it is labeled to make these applications prior to 5^th leaf rice.  This is about both crop safety and getting the residual product through the canopy and to the soil where it can work.

Another issue that has come up in these situations is a lot of small rice being sprayed.  In Clearfield rice or with a product like propanil it is not a problem to spray one leaf rice.  However, for some products like Ricestar, Regiment, Sharpen, and Highcard (MaxAce) the label says something like 3-leaf, 4-leaf, or 2-3 leaf rice.  These are there to protect against crop injury issues.

One final note this week, on cut ground we recommend a year of chicken litter and soybeans before planting rice.  I get at least 2-3 calls a year that start out “can I use Command on cut ground?”, the answer is no its off label and there is no way to know how much injury you will see, it can be from bad to not much at all.  This is one reason we like a year of beans to let the ground “recover.”  I end up recommending a lot of programs with herbicides proven to not cause injury:  Clearfield on in-bred lines, Prowl delayed PRE, Clincher for example.  Then later as the rice begins to grow, and we get an idea of the condition of the crop we can consider other “stronger” treatments.  Unfortunately, by taking Command PRE out of the lineup it usually is not as clean as we would like by the end of the year.

Quinclorac Products and Rates

Jarrod Hardke

Be careful when selecting your quinclorac product.  Our most common products are Facet, Quinstar, and Prize – and they have different use rates!

The rate range for Facet is 22-43 oz/acre while the rate range for Quinstar and Prize are 8-16 oz/acre.  Use of rates outside these ranges is off label and can result in excessive crop injury.  Use caution when applying these products to ensure the proper rate.

Table 1.  Common quinclorac herbicide products and rate ranges.

Market Update

Scott Stiles

It was an interesting week of wild, back-and-forth trading in the rice market.  Wednesday (4/30) was First Notice Day for the May futures contract.  On First Notice Day, all speculative longs are subject to delivery.  That might have been a factor behind the new lows made on Monday and Tuesday, with the remaining longs in the May contract heading for the exit?

"April is the cruelest month" (T.S. Eliot) and it has been for the September contract; slipping down to 4-year lows at $12.78/cwt on Tuesday.  In typical rice market fashion, we saw a sharp reversal Wednesday and closed 36 ½ cents higher.  On the daily chart there are some gaps the September contract could potentially refill.  These are between $13.50 and $13.53 ½ and $13.67 ½ and $13.75 ½.  Like all the grain markets today, rice needs some fresh news.  Hard evidence that some rice acres shifted to soybeans would be helpful (which may be revealed in the June Acreage survey) or some purchase commitments from the ongoing trade talks.  For the time being, the rough rice market is under pressure from new South American supplies.  The milled rice market is under the weight of lower priced Asian supplies.

Fig. 4.  CME September Rough Rice Futures, Weekly Continuation.

Export Sales:

Rice exports have been lackluster.  For the week ending April 24^th, long-grain rough rice sales totaled 2,475 tons—a 6-week low.  Mexico was the only buyer and the only recipient for the week’s 2,883 tons of shipments.  There are 14 weeks left in the old crop marketing year that ends July 31.  At present, long-grain rough rice sales are 25% behind last year and shipments are 22% behind.  Shipments last week were the second lowest of the marketing year and the worst since last August.  To date, there haven’t been any new crop sales of long-grain.

For long-grain milled, net sales last week totaled 746 tons with Mexico (437 MT), Canada (253 MT), and the Netherlands (56 MT) the only three buyers.  Shipments totaled 3,248 tons with the primary destinations being Mexico (638 MT), Canada (1,378 MT) and Saudi Arabia (996 MT).

Fig. 5.  U.S. long-grain rice export sales.

Source: USDA Foreign Ag Service, April 24, 2025.

On March 4^th Canada placed a 25% import tariff on $30 billion in goods imported from the U.S.  The list of products covered by the tariff includes rice.  Specifically, the tariff applies to brown rice, semi-milled or wholly milled rice.  Canada continues to buy limited quantities of milled rice from the U.S.  A stronger Canadian currency since the tariffs were implemented helps offset some of the 25% increase.

Crop Progress:

In last Monday’s Crop Progress, NASS reported U.S. rice planting was 64% complete as of April 27^th and ahead of the 5-year average of 51 percent.  Louisiana was 92% planted, Texas 89%, Mississippi 62%, Missouri 44%, California 20%, and Arkansas was 68% planted.  Planting progress for all the key rice states is ahead of the 5-year average.

Fertilizer Market:

Earlier this week we ran an article on trends in the fertilizer market.  Link to full story: Increased corn acres driving higher fertilizer prices; farmers may see fuel price relief

The heavy shift to corn this year is likely a key driver behind the strength in Urea prices year-to-date.  Plus, Mississippi River navigation has been a challenge over the past few weeks with some restrictions in place.  Wholesale (barge/rail) Urea prices for the Midsouth region (AR, LA, MS, TN) have increased $122 per ton or 33 percent since January 1.  Compared to this time last year, Urea is up $102 per ton or 26 percent.  DAP (18-46-0) in the Midsouth region averaged $688/ton last week, up from $620 at the beginning of the year.  Potash averaged $365/ton, up $47/ton year to date.  In most years, fertilizer prices will trend higher from February to early May before turning lower.

DD50 Rice Management Program is Live

The DD50 Rice Management Program is live and ready for fields to be enrolled for the 2025 season.  All log-in and producer information has been retained from the 2024 season, so if you used the program last year you can log in just as you did last year.  Log in and enroll fields here:  https://dd50.uada.edu.

Use the Arkansas Rice Advisor Internet App!

The Arkansas Rice Advisor site https://riceadvisor.uada.edu functions like an app on your mobile device.  There you can readily access the DD50 program, rice seeding rate calculator, drill calibration, fertilizer and N rate calculators, publications, and more.

Additional Information

Arkansas Rice Updates are published periodically to provide timely information and recommendations for rice production in Arkansas.  If you would like to be added to this email list, please send your request to rice@uada.edu.

This information will also be posted to the Arkansas Row Crops blog (http://www.arkansas-crops.com/) where additional information from Extension specialists can be found.

More information on rice production, including access to all publications and reports, can be found at http://www.uaex.uada.edu/rice.

Acknowledgements

We sincerely appreciate the support for this publication provided by the rice farmers of Arkansas and administered by the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board.

The authors greatly appreciate the feedback and contributions of all growers, county agents, consultants, and rice industry stakeholders.