Mattie Powers

ARKANSAS COUNTY, Ark. — According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, acres of rice were at a historic low in Arkansas.

Arkansas Farm Bureau Director of Commodity Activities and Market Information, Brandy Carroll, explained that increased production costs were the reason behind the decrease.

“Normally we plant around a million and a half acres of rice in Arkansas. This year, we have planted just over 850,000 acres of rice.” 

According to Carroll, the low acreage had already created an impact on the state. 

“We’ve already seen Riceland Foods, which is a huge rice co-op,” Carroll said. “They have, I think, 23 locations across the state, and they’re going to close nine of them. So, that means that they won’t be utilizing those farmer, you know, those hard investments, and they won’t be hiring as many seasonal workers.”

Jay Coker had been a farmer for the last 30 years and emphasized he had never seen the rice acreage quite this low.

“That’s a level that really brings about a lot of concern and a lot of soul-searching within individual farm operations in the industry,” Coker said. 

Coker highlighted that there were many different contributing factors to this historic low, such as higher costs to plant and maintain the crop as well as the purchasing cost being lower than in years past. 

“Well, we had to make some choices to go with the crop that we felt like we would basically lose the least amount of money. And there are certain situations where we had choices where we could go into beans or corn that we felt like at that time would be a better fit than rice on those specific acres, those fields,” Coker said.

Published Date: July 16, 2026