HORIZON AG REGIONAL REPORTS

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!

Grand Prairie, Arkansas

Extreme heat, and the warnings that come with it, are what we’ve all been dealing with this summer, but Mother Nature cranked it up to 100°+ for most of us in the Mid-South the past couple of weeks.

Draining has arrived for most of us in Arkansas and Mississippi, and it’s rapidly approaching in Missouri. While we’re hovering around the 100° mark, we need to be mindful of when we drain. It won’t take fields long to dry out in this kind of heat and drought. Once the water is pulled, the ground will be solid in 10 days or so for most of us. Please don’t get too far ahead of harvest. We don’t want plants dying out completely and running into lodging or lower milling yields. Several of you planted in blocks, and I’d encourage you to drain those blocks in a way that lets us harvest them on schedule. I’d recommend holding the water until you’re 10 to 14 days from harvesting that field. This helps keep the plants alive and stabilizes milling yields.

Harvest has started in Arkansas and Mississippi, and growers tell me that when they started harvesting a field, the moisture was at 19%, and by the time they finished, it was down to 16%. This means some of the rice out there could be drier than you expect. Once the water’s pulled, it dries down fast. The harvest reports I’ve received out of Central Arkansas so far have been “average to slightly above average,” and reports from Mississippi are 175-210+ with an average of 19% moisture so far. Harvest will be in full swing this week, so hopefully we’ll get a better gauge of how the crop is doing over the next couple of weeks.

Growers in SEMO are holding onto the floods in their fields during this extreme heat, but as soon as the weather breaks, they should begin draining, with harvest expected around the end of August.

We had some surprises in the FSA Planted Acreage Report last week. Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas all had acreage increases while Louisiana and Missouri had decreases in planted acres from the NASS June Acreage Report. We’ll see in the next few weeks, as harvest progresses, if these changes in acres mean a change in the $/bu.

From all of us at Horizon Ag, we wish all of you a great and bountiful harvest! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

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