Arkansas Rice Update 5-30-25

by Jarrod Hardke, Rice Extension Agronomist - May 30, 2025

Arkansas Rice Update 2025-11

May 30, 2025

Jarrod Hardke, Scott Stiles, & Bob Scott

“I wonder if I’m past the point of rescue.”

Shot Through the Heart

“One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months.  We been through every kind of rain there is.  Little bitty stingin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain.  Rain that flew in sideways.  And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.  Shoot, it even rained at night…”  -- Forrest Gump

And just like that, the remainder of 2025 rice planting progress was wrapped up.  So not entirely of course, there will still be some scratched in late.  But last weekend’s rains, very heavy in some areas, washed away remaining glimmers of hope for many to continue with remaining rice planting efforts.  In some areas, river levels surged back up while in others it simply made a muddy mess that isn’t drying quickly.  Some ground will dry between now and the next forecast round of rains middle to end of next week, but we’ll only see a last gasp of planting effort.

So where does that leave us?  A week or so ago, I continued to point toward the 1.2 million acre mark as a reference point.  However, the heavy and widespread rains that have occurred since then, combined with the economic climate and lack of drying conditions make that number appear too high.  Let’s call it somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 million total acres of rice for Arkansas.  Like a broken watch, I’m often only right twice a day, so we’ll have to wait and see if this is one of those times.  We have planted at least 1.1 million acres of rice every year since 2014 (we were slightly under in 2013).

Temperatures have improved only slightly of late, at least putting us solidly in the 80s.  After late March and early April temperatures had us accumulating a very rapid amount of DD50 units driving crop growth, May is much more average.  In the absence of ample sunlight, the crop just doesn’t have a great look, but fields that have gone to flood and started to take up nitrogen now have a much better appearance and offer hope.

Read on below for more information on late planting decisions, weed control, drift, and rice markets.

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.

How Late is Too Late to Plant?

Jarrod Hardke

It’s never fun to get to June with rice we still need to plant.  Years where times are good and we still want to keep planting rice are one thing, but rains pressing us this late and forcing us to gamble on the best crop decision are another ball of wax.

If you elect continuing to plant rice into June, below are the percent of optimum yields for selected cultivars that were included in planting date studies from 2022-2024 at Stuttgart and Harrisburg.

Note that you can take the numbers at their literal values – if you normally expect 200 bu/acre then 85% of that is 170 bu/acre.  But keep in mind that by having six planting dates we seem to always catch that magical high yield window each year.  So, with RT 7302 at Stuttgart as an example, if you look at the data comparing more the average optimum percentage of 93% to the mid-May 87% and early June 82%, that’s more of a 10% drop to me.  So we could see some better outcomes if weather is in our favor for late summer and early fall, but when you pencil things out you have to account for the 15%+ potential reduction as well.

As far as planting date cutoff recommendations, speaking very generally, I recommend June 5 for northeast Arkansas, June 10 for central Arkansas, and June 15 for southern Arkansas.  Basically the range extends slightly later the further south we move as temperatures hang on later in the fall the further south we move.  These are my views based on performance data and field observations.  The later past these dates we push planting, the greater the risk of further yield reductions, the crop refusing to mature out, and difficulty harvesting in late fall conditions.  There are exceptions out there where pretty late plantings performed very well (2019 when summer showed up in September and October) but we can’t bet on that.

Table 1.  Average percent of optimum grain yield by planting date for selected cultivars at the Rice Research and Extension Center, Stuttgart, 2022-2024.

Table 2.  Average percent of optimum grain yield by planting date for selected cultivars at the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center, Harrisburg, 2022-2024.

Bobbing and Weeding

Bob Scott

It looks like we may finally get some warmer temperatures, some drier fields, and also some sunshine.  I think these conditions will help us out a lot as I've been getting a lot of calls on extra herbicide injury this year.  In addition, some of our fields where we've had drift need this type of weather to help recover, whether it's Newpath/Preface or glyphosate injury, good growing conditions can't be beat in terms of getting to feel back on track.

I can't hardly believe it, but I'm already getting calls on heading barnyardgrass as shown in Fig. 2.  In general, this makes any weed harder to kill.  Once weeds go reproductive, they just don't seem to take up the herbicides as well and we get less activity.  This has made for a tough year, not only in rice, but also soybean as herbicide applications have been difficult to get out.  Be prepared to hit some of these fields with a split shot or two applications either prior to flood or preflood followed by post flood to clean up some of this larger grass.

Herbicide drift continues to be an issue.  Fig. 3 shows a field of Gramoxone drift.  One of the weird things you see is the Rice that is less injured had some missed winter annual broadleaf weeds in it.  This biomass intercepted some of the drift and you can see the injury is not as bad on the left as it is on the right this phenomenon can also be seen where we overlap drill rows.  In this case, the injury was severe.  Normally with Gramoxone drift we see some spotting and speckling on older leaves and the new leaves coming out look pretty good.  It has been my experience that this type of injury will not impact yield.  I will add that in general when looking at fields that have had herbicide drift look at the new leaves, emerging from the center of the plant the new tiller (or trifoliate in soybean) if these are green and actively growing, it is generally assumed that field will recover.

Also, just a quick reminder, the soybean in Fig. 4 has been damaged by ALS chemistry such as Regiment, Permit Plus, or Gambit just be aware when spraying your rice to keep these products off the beans and clean those tanks!  Planting STS® or Bolt® soybean around problem rice areas can help mitigate this effect.

Finally, I will mention Row Rice.  Without the flood, we must continue to control weeds in rice until we get good canopy closure just like in soybean or any other row crop.  Just driving around, I see a lot of pigweeds starting to poke their heads up in some of these row rice fields (Fig. 5).  Loyant herbicide has a good fit for pigweed control postemergence in row rice.  Brake also can offer extended residual control if pigweed has not emerged yet.  Consult the MP 44 for more information on row rice weed control.

Fig. 2.  Heading barnyardgrass in mid-May.

Fig. 3.  Severe Gramoxone (paraquat) drift in rice.  Some areas protected by weeds.

Fig. 4.  ALS herbicide injury from a rice field drift to soybean.

Fig. 5.  Row rice with pigweeds.

Market Update

Scott Stiles

Market Update:

Some good news to report this week.  That being a U.S. sale of long-grain milled rice to Iraq.  The 44,000-ton sale brought the marketing year total to Iraq to 263,972 tons.  U.S. sales to Iraq are currently 51% above last year’s 174,623 tons.

Iraq is the second largest long-grain milled export market for the U.S., remaining slightly behind Haiti this year.  Of interest, a few articles appeared this week on Iraq’s 80-year low water reserves and Haiti’s discussions with a well-known defense contractor as the situation there is looking more chaotic each day. 

Last week’s sale to Iraq put milled rice export sales about 2% ahead of last year.  In contrast, rough rice sales year-to-date are 28% behind last year on sharp declines in sales to Mexico and Venezuela.  No new crop long-grain sales for 2025/26 have been reported thus far.

As we mentioned last week, it appeared the September contract was on a mission to refill a pair of chart gaps.  The first of which was $13.50-$13.53 ½.  Done.  Above there, trading ran into some resistance at the 100-day moving average in the $13.64 area.  That price level has contained the upside all week following a $1/cwt rally from the May 14^th low at $12.53.

Fig. 6.  CME September 2025 Rough Rice Futures, Daily Chart.

The next USDA supply/demand report is June 12^th.  It will not provide a great deal of new information.  The June 30 Acreage report will be key to price direction for rice.  It will provide some answers on how the weather and markets impacted grower’s original planting intentions.  Any June 30 acreage revisions will be worked into the July WASDE production estimates.  The strength seen in new crop futures in recent weeks likely points to fewer rice acres.  This not only applies to Arkansas, but perhaps the Midsouth region.  The map below drives home this point as some areas of the Midsouth have seen the wettest spring in the last 133 years.

Fig. 7.  March 31 – May 27, 2025 total precipitation ranks by climate district (IEM Estimates).

The crop insurance Final Planting Date for rice in Arkansas and the Midsouth region was May 25th.

The 15-day Late Planting Period that follows, ends June 9th.

Fig. 8.  Crop insurance “End of Late Planting Period” for Rice.

Rice planted during the Late Planting Period is still insurable, but at a reduced coverage level.  Rice planted in the Late Planting Period will have its insurance guarantee reduced by 1 percent per day.  For example, if rice is planted five (5) days after the Final Planting Date, a 75% Revenue Protection policy becomes a 70% Revenue Protection policy.

Visit with your crop insurance agent for more details on prevented planting. 

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.