Horizon Ag Field Reports - May 10, 2019

Texas/Louisiana

As I’m writing this report, we are looking at predictions of 3 inches to 10 inches of rain starting Wednesday, May 8, through next week. This covers my entire territory. The last thing we need right now is the higher rainfall totals of this prediction. The rice crop is finally starting to look pretty decent, so I would hate to see a bunch of it go underwater. A large portion of our crop has just been fertilized and going to flood.
 
For some reason, this has been a very challenging year establishing stands, and I really thought we were running late compared to last year. Well, I went back and looked at my records from 2018 to see just how late we were. I was surprised to see that we are running pretty much right on the same schedule as last year. I started flooding my first drill-planted rice in 2018 on May 2. I started on May 3 this year. We are not behind schedule as much as it felt like we were. There is still a little planting going on in Texas and Louisiana, which is common each year. Hopefully we miss the big rains they are calling for, and good luck to everyone out there.

Michael Fruge 
District Field Representative
(832) 260-6193

Mississippi, Northeast Louisiana and Southeast Arkansas

The rice crop in Mississippi has made sporadic progress over the last two weeks. The earliest-planted rice that didn’t have stand issues is getting close to going to flood. We did have some areas that had to be replanted, but overall the replants haven’t been extraordinary. There are still some areas in the state where conditions have not allowed much, if any, work to be done. I have had a few calls about flying rice in either for water seeding or to scratch in trying to beat the coming rain.
 
We have been able to catch up on spraying, pulling levees and putting out starter fertilizer in a lot of areas. My best guess on planting progress in north Mississippi is around 20%. As you move south towards Bolivar and Sunflower counties, planting progress seems to be around 60%. With the state of bean prices Monday of this week, I have heard some talk that late-planted rice may be in the conversation for some farmers in the next few weeks. One other issue that’s been coming up a lot recently has been injury from off-target herbicide drift on emerged rice. Time will tell how the crop is affected by this, but it seems to be turning into a bigger issue this year.

It seems North Louisiana has been hit harder by the rains over the last few weeks than the northern portion of the Mississippi rice growing area. A big chunk of the medium grain rice was planted first, and now guys are waiting for conditions to improve so they can move into planting the bulk of their long grain acres. The lower-lying areas are still up in the air, and the projected rain for the end of this week does not look like it is going to help the situation. I’d estimate North Louisiana is somewhere between 20% to 30% planted at this point. Hopefully, the weather will break so that some progress can be made heading into the end of May. Please feel free to call with any questions or if I can help in any way.

Tim Jett 
District Field Representative
(901) 687-6362