Riceland Foods announced Friday (Dec. 8) a leadership reorganization under which the board of directors has appointed Kevin McGilton as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.

He replaces Jason Brancel as CEO. Brancel was named to the position in 2022.

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.

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.  

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.