The 2023 USA Rice Outlook Conference, the largest rice conference in the United States, kicked off last night with a grand opening reception welcoming colleagues to talk shop, get some work done, and have some well-earned fun.
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The Yellow Rails & Rice birding event that we wrote about in last week’s issue of Delta Farm Press is helping to close the chasm chiseled into our once-agrarian society. Visitors to those Louisiana rice fields are entranced by riding in combines, talking IRL (in real life!) to family farmers, and discovering the vast populations of wildlife that wander the fields.
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Decisions on variety selection are some of the earliest and most critical you will make. This information will help you decide which rice varieties are best suited to your particular growing conditions.
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The primary function of the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation is to ensure farmers can continue to feed a growing world. One of the ways it does that is by helping move agricultural products through the Louisiana Farm Bureau Marketing Association. In this episode, Karl Wiggers sits down with grain marketing specialists Greg Fox and Grayson Close to talk about the company and how they help farmers across Louisiana sell their crops at the best price at the best time.
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The USA Rice Outlook Conference begins this week, and USA Rice has once again launched a comprehensive meeting app sponsored by BASF to help attendees manage their event experience.
“We have more than 25 sessions and 35 speakers packed onto four stages with something for everyone,” said USA Rice President & CEO Peter Bachmann. “The app will help attendees look at all their options, read about sessions and presenters, build a personalized schedule, connect with fellow attendees and speakers, and access presentation materials.”
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As growers approach the end of the south Louisiana ratoon crop to wrap up their 2023 season, their focus begins to shift towards industry meetings and the holidays.
Last week, USA Rice RMA Chair Meryl Kennedy and Louisiana Farm Bureau Vice President Richard Fontenot, representing the rice industry, joined Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture Dr. Mike Strain and Nestor Navarro, founder of Navarro International Group, LLC, at a round table listening discussion here with Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Alexis Taylor.
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Louisiana corn for grain production is forecast at 119 million bushels, unchanged from the October 1 forecast but up 61 percent from 2022. Based on conditions as of November 1, yield is expected to average 175 bushels per acre, unchanged from last month but up 5 bushels from last year. Producers expect to harvest 680,000 acres of corn for grain, up 245,000 acres from 2022.
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In Louisiana cooking, rice is practically its own food group. There’s steamed white rice as the base for dishes like gumbo, crawfish étouffée, and red beans and rice. There’s rice that’s cooked with seasonings and sausage for a one-pot meal, like jambalaya. There’s dirty rice that’s speckled with meat and seasonings, using underutilized organ meat like chicken livers and gizzards. And finally, there’s rice dressing—a more “dressed up” version of dirty rice.
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Last week, nearly a dozen rice farmers representing all six major rice-producing states fanned out across Capitol Hill to meet with Members of Congress and key staff, sharing industry concerns and priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill, labor, and trade issues.
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The McNeese State University Farm is growing a little rice. McNeese, the LSU Agricultural Center and Jefferson Davis Rice Growers have joined forces to research varieties of rice that grow well in Southwest Louisiana.
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Since the launch of the first Landsat satellite in 1972, NASA has been mapping global agriculture to provide critical knowledge about the role U.S. agriculture plays in the global food system. Fifty years and eight Landsat craft later, the volume and value of data collected is staggering. Researchers, scientists, and stakeholders gathered here last week for the official kick-off of NASA Acres, the next project that aims to turn Earth observation (EO) technology into a critical tool for America’s farmers.
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Over the past two years, consumers have felt whiplash from volatile grain prices, as powerful players in the global markets cut off trade. It began with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which disrupted exports of products including wheat and fertilizer from two of the world’s biggest suppliers. Russia has repeatedly used agriculture as a pawn in its game to punish Ukraine and its supporters, and its recent pull-out of the Black Sea grain deal, which had helped keep exports flowing, caused another round of price spikes in the markets.
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Earlier this year, USA Rice President & CEO Betsy Ward announced she would retire after 18 years at USA Rice, 16 of them in her current role, and almost four decades advocating for U.S. agriculture and forestry in Washington, DC, and around the world. Peter Bachmann, USA Rice vice president of policy & government affairs since 2019, was named her successor by the Board of Directors on Tuesday.
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USA Rice recently hosted a delegation of six Central American retailers and distributors from Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica for a week-long trade mission through rice country in the mid-south.
The tour included two main stops in Memphis, Tennessee, and Lafayette, Louisiana, where participants met with USA Rice members and industry representatives.
The LSU AgCenter is partnering with several universities and countries on a $22 million award from the U.S. Agency for International Development aimed at improving lives around the world by making cereal crops more readily available to those most at risk for hunger and malnutrition.
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