As the Mississippi River meandered through several southern states over tens of thousands of years, it left a valuable layer of fertile soil in its wake. This low-lying floodplain was once a forested wetland but is now home to most of the rice farms in the United States.

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While Texas rice growers face a stiff challenge to fend off yield- and profit-limiting kernel smut, Texas A&M AgriLife is quickly working to find a cure as part of a national collaborative research effort.

Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialists have joined forces with lead institution Louisiana State University in a project funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture–National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant. The project goal is to improve rice farming sustainability and profitability.

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George Tibbitts, a third-generation farmer in Arbuckle, CA, has been growing rice on his 1,200-acre farm for three decades. His Sacramento Valley irrigation district, one of the oldest in the state, has long benefitted from senior water rights, which date back to 1914. The rights allow farmers such as Tibbitts to keep their fields flush with water, even in arid conditions.

But last year, with much of the state in extreme drought, he faced a career first: His district slashed water allocations by an unprecedented 90 percent, leaving him with little choice but to fallow all of his rice fields. 

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After more than a decade of meeting up the road in Jennings, the Louisiana Rice Council (LARC) and the Louisiana Rice Growers Association (LARGA) returned here to the International Rice Festival Building to hold their annual business meetings, talk about the coming year, and hear industry reports.

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Conservation and rice farming have always gone together, especially here at Live Oak Farm in Vermilion Parish. The farm’s owners, the Godchaux family, have been an integral part of the Louisiana and U.S. rice industries for multiple generations as original founders of Riviana Foods. The family continues to produce rice on this picturesque property of mossy covered oaks and prairie marshland south of Abbeville, located along the Vermilion River, just north of the Intracoastal Waterway.

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Al Awees, the private company that took over much of the food purchasing for the government of Iraq in 2021, made two purchases of 44,000 metric tons each of U.S. rice as the 2022 calendar year ended.

The total of 88,000 metric tons may not seem like much given that U.S. rice exports are expected to total around 3 million metric tons in the 2022-23 marketing year, but the symbolism may be more important than the actual amount.

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The 26th Annual Conservation Systems Cotton & Rice Conference (Con-Till) was held here this week. The conference first convened in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1998. Initially the meeting focused on conservation related to rice and cotton production but has expanded to include varied production topics while adding corn, soybeans, irrigation, precision ag, and regenerative ag presentations.

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