On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture convened to consider its version of the 2024 Farm Bill, formally known as H.R. 8467, The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024, ultimately passing the measure by a bipartisan vote of 33 to 21.

This “markup” process allows Committee members to vote to accept or reject amendments offered to the bill by other members of the Committee. The session lasted approximately 11 hours, with the Committee approving a handful of amendments that aren’t directly impactful to the U.S. rice industry.

Last week, USA Rice participated in the U.S.-Cuba Agriculture Business Conference organized by the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba with the hope of furthering engagement between U.S. rice exporters and Cuban importers.

USA Rice met with private companies, agricultural cooperatives, and Alimport, the government agency that imports agricultural goods (and used to be the only entity authorized to do so). As Cuba is economically transitioning from state socialism to a mixed economy, the private sector is being developed and able to import U.S. goods. Additionally, last month the Cuban government authorized agricultural cooperatives to import and export.

Caroline Hardy has joined the USA Rice team as a government affairs intern and will be working out of the Arlington office until she begins a law clerkship in Louisiana later this summer. 

A Louisiana native, Caroline earned her B.S. from McNeese State University in agribusiness in 2021 and is entering her final year at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Paul M. Hebert Law Center.

For those of us in South Louisiana, we sometimes wince a little whenever we see videos pop up online from out-of-town YouTubers documenting their travels to Acadiana.

Not because we don't want them down here, but mainly because we're never sure what sort of light the video will show us in.

Admittedly, for people not from here, there's a whole lot about our lifestyle and culture that some people seem to misunderstand.

It hasn’t been that long ago that the only way to irrigate rice was to build a system of levees strong enough to keep water at a prescribed depth on a field until it was ready to be drained and harvested.

Fast forward to 2024 and rice farmers now have seven, eight or possibly even nine systems, depending on how you count them, for keeping their crops watered during the long Midsouth growing season.