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Letter to the Editor: ARKANSAS RICE GROWERS ASSOCIATION THE RICE ORGANIZATION THAT OPENED THE CHINA RICE MARKET
This is an open RICE letter.
We are still hearing the problems causing the farm economy woes of the rice farmers in our state. The War with Iran, ( high fuel and fertilizer prices ), low commodity prices, section 31 investigation where some countries are subsidizing their farmers more than allowed under the WTO (World trade organization ), some stories where blackbirds ate the seed rice after it was planted ( a few farmers had to replant 400-500 acres because of that ), local mill drying facilities being closed for the 2026 rice harvest because of a loss of rice acres. We will now dive into the other problem that doesn’t get talked about as much.
The first figures that I heard concerning a rice carryover in February was 9-10 million bushels. That figure is called being in the pipeline where that is the last of the previous years crop that is headed to the grocery store shelves. Since then, I have been told that there was 32 million bushels carryover, and lately I read that there could be 50 million bushels carryover. Why so much? The rice is not meeting quality standards that our customers want and expect. If memory serves me right, I will share info heard by me or told to me of some rice issues or comments.
I will do a timeline of these issues to prove a point. Around 20 years ago, someone made a comment that “Rice is a bulk commodity, quality is not important”. An article written in 2011-2012, U.S. Long Grain Rice Industry: At a crucial crossroads by Karen Ott Mayer. Here is where you can read it, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/69613493d52529299f3c9ee0/t/.6964069f68d4ec78037c1b83/1768162975651/us-long-grain-rice-industry-crucial-cropssroadds.pdf. This article tells of quality issues that need to be addressed, IP needs, same problems we face today, 15 years later, a very interesting read. In 2019, someone was moving rice from the 2015 crop, probably bad quality. Someone still has some bad quality 2018 rice crop to get rid of. I will insert a figure that I last heard was that rice planted at the time was 85% hybrid and 15% conventional. I do not know if that holds true today for planting. Someone had 500 trailer loads (around 577,500 bushels) of Hybrid brokens in a storage facility, that rice needed to be moved for storage purposes, so it was all hauled out to another facility 120 miles away. Then a short time later, it was hauled back to Greenville, loaded on barges, shipped to New Orleans, rejected, shipped back to Greenville, and was to run back through a mill again. That rice was cloddy and probably had sweated in storage at some point. Another movement of rice, which included 30 barges (1 barge holds 45-50,000 rough rice bushels, or 60 loads of milled rice per barge) at Greenville, started with high hopes, ended after a few barges were loaded, because it couldn’t make the grade. I talked to someone that grades rice, and he said the export buyers have had it with the low milling and chalky rice. I talked to a rice official in Central America and he gave me a website to go to and read about the reasons we are losing rice markets down there. Look for yourself, FAS – Global Agricultural Trade System ( GATS ). Up to now, everyone wants to say they are part of the “rice industry”, lets see who takes credit for all this. 15 years ago, someone writes an article that rice is at a crossroad, no improvement but increased yields and low milling quality where we can’t sell our rice. I even heard that pet food companies want a higher quality of rice for their product. If we can’t sell to pet food companies, I hope this is not the beginning of the end for rice in Arkansas. Throughout the years, and especially maybe the last 3-5 years, how many farmers have lost money from raising low quality rice, and how many more are on the horizon. That has been delayed for a year. Again, in Arkansas in 2011, there were 2,752 rice farmers, 2022 there were 1607. I’m scared to see the numbers when they come out in 2027, released every 5 years.
So how do we fix this. I don’t know if there is enough time to catch up. The problem with low milling quality has fell on deaf ears. We keep promoting high yielding rice with mediocre milling results. Back in the day with conventional rice, to get a good price for your rice, it needed to mill at least a 58-68 or 58-70. A lot of times your first number would be in the 60’s. I haven’t heard of those numbers in a long time. Now I hear upper 40’s or low 50’s. That is not what our customers want. That’s why they are going elsewhere to buy their rice. We use to be the go to guys for rice. They knew we had good quality rice. The market to China is open. Once again, China could eat the entire U.S. rice crop in 11-14 days. That is a demanding market. An Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA) member asked a rice official from China how much good quality rice do you want. His reply was, “all you can send us”. Right now, we have two chances of selling rice to China on a large scale, they are SLIM and NONE. Because of the same quality in low milling yields that the US is losing its market in Central America to rice from countries in South America such as Brazil and Uruguay. If we had good quality rice to sell to China, we would not be having this conversation. The possible price the farmers could get from selling rice to China would cover the problems of today. We need single variety storage and IP (Identity preserved). The Chinese can tell if rice is comingled (mixed varieties). The Chinese people consume a lot of rice. I will say two things now about conventional rice. High hot days at the wrong time or high night time temperatures can affect the milling quality of conventional rice also. It is not exempt from that issue. But good quality rice is more consistent with conventional rice, and it does not yield like the Hybrid rice. But we could at least get rid of it. But with the Hybrid rice at this time, they need the bushels to get volume to help pay the bills, even as bad as the price is, and the chemicals they can spray on Hybrids help with some weed control in certain spots. And for those that don’t know, there are chemicals for conventional rice, and chemicals for Hybrid.
The newest threat that has been brought up is imported rice. Now it is 30% of our domestic market, with it going to 50% by 2033. It is not like it has not happened before. There have been two instances where the Rice Industry has imported rice before, Thai and Vietnam rice, somewhere around 15-20 years ago. And concerning the Vietnam rice, the powers that be were OK with that. If memory serves me right, I think that it was a private company that imported the rice and the rice industry didn’t have any say so over that. That importing of the Vietnam rice was brought up by the U S Rice Producers Association, the national organization run by farmers representing farmers. At the time, Vietnam rice was being raised and treated with chemicals we had outlawed before then and irrigated with water from canals that had raw sewage dumping in them. The organization that was charged with protecting the interests of the farmer/producer chose to sit idle on the sidelines, while farmers were mad at the idea why didn’t they buy local rice. From the 2011 bad milling article, we still have the same problem as back then. 15 years and no change. I understand that the last 3 years the quality issue has been discussed once, with no action taken in a meeting that happens a few times a year.
Rice Farmers, you have to do it yourself. Almost everyone knows someone to complain to about changing the way things are being done. Tell them you want a change of direction. Maybe focus on less bushels and better milling and quality. We can’t kick this can down the road any longer. Quality is the issue at hand.
To end this article with another comment from someone in the rice industry, they stated, “We don’t have enough good rice to blend with the bad rice”.
We are still hearing the problems causing the farm economy woes of the rice farmers in our state. The War with Iran, ( high fuel and fertilizer prices ), low commodity prices, section 31 investigation where some countries are subsidizing their farmers more than allowed under the WTO (World trade organization ), some stories where blackbirds ate the seed rice after it was planted ( a few farmers had to replant 400-500 acres because of that ), local mill drying facilities being closed for the 2026 rice harvest because of a loss of rice acres. We will now dive into the other problem that doesn’t get talked about as much.
The first figures that I heard concerning a rice carryover in February was 9-10 million bushels. That figure is called being in the pipeline where that is the last of the previous years crop that is headed to the grocery store shelves. Since then, I have been told that there was 32 million bushels carryover, and lately I read that there could be 50 million bushels carryover. Why so much? The rice is not meeting quality standards that our customers want and expect. If memory serves me right, I will share info heard by me or told to me of some rice issues or comments.
I will do a timeline of these issues to prove a point. Around 20 years ago, someone made a comment that “Rice is a bulk commodity, quality is not important”. An article written in 2011-2012, U.S. Long Grain Rice Industry: At a crucial crossroads by Karen Ott Mayer. Here is where you can read it, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/69613493d52529299f3c9ee0/t/.6964069f68d4ec78037c1b83/1768162975651/us-long-grain-rice-industry-crucial-cropssroadds.pdf. This article tells of quality issues that need to be addressed, IP needs, same problems we face today, 15 years later, a very interesting read. In 2019, someone was moving rice from the 2015 crop, probably bad quality. Someone still has some bad quality 2018 rice crop to get rid of. I will insert a figure that I last heard was that rice planted at the time was 85% hybrid and 15% conventional. I do not know if that holds true today for planting. Someone had 500 trailer loads (around 577,500 bushels) of Hybrid brokens in a storage facility, that rice needed to be moved for storage purposes, so it was all hauled out to another facility 120 miles away. Then a short time later, it was hauled back to Greenville, loaded on barges, shipped to New Orleans, rejected, shipped back to Greenville, and was to run back through a mill again. That rice was cloddy and probably had sweated in storage at some point. Another movement of rice, which included 30 barges (1 barge holds 45-50,000 rough rice bushels, or 60 loads of milled rice per barge) at Greenville, started with high hopes, ended after a few barges were loaded, because it couldn’t make the grade. I talked to someone that grades rice, and he said the export buyers have had it with the low milling and chalky rice. I talked to a rice official in Central America and he gave me a website to go to and read about the reasons we are losing rice markets down there. Look for yourself, FAS – Global Agricultural Trade System ( GATS ). Up to now, everyone wants to say they are part of the “rice industry”, lets see who takes credit for all this. 15 years ago, someone writes an article that rice is at a crossroad, no improvement but increased yields and low milling quality where we can’t sell our rice. I even heard that pet food companies want a higher quality of rice for their product. If we can’t sell to pet food companies, I hope this is not the beginning of the end for rice in Arkansas. Throughout the years, and especially maybe the last 3-5 years, how many farmers have lost money from raising low quality rice, and how many more are on the horizon. That has been delayed for a year. Again, in Arkansas in 2011, there were 2,752 rice farmers, 2022 there were 1607. I’m scared to see the numbers when they come out in 2027, released every 5 years.
So how do we fix this. I don’t know if there is enough time to catch up. The problem with low milling quality has fell on deaf ears. We keep promoting high yielding rice with mediocre milling results. Back in the day with conventional rice, to get a good price for your rice, it needed to mill at least a 58-68 or 58-70. A lot of times your first number would be in the 60’s. I haven’t heard of those numbers in a long time. Now I hear upper 40’s or low 50’s. That is not what our customers want. That’s why they are going elsewhere to buy their rice. We use to be the go to guys for rice. They knew we had good quality rice. The market to China is open. Once again, China could eat the entire U.S. rice crop in 11-14 days. That is a demanding market. An Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA) member asked a rice official from China how much good quality rice do you want. His reply was, “all you can send us”. Right now, we have two chances of selling rice to China on a large scale, they are SLIM and NONE. Because of the same quality in low milling yields that the US is losing its market in Central America to rice from countries in South America such as Brazil and Uruguay. If we had good quality rice to sell to China, we would not be having this conversation. The possible price the farmers could get from selling rice to China would cover the problems of today. We need single variety storage and IP (Identity preserved). The Chinese can tell if rice is comingled (mixed varieties). The Chinese people consume a lot of rice. I will say two things now about conventional rice. High hot days at the wrong time or high night time temperatures can affect the milling quality of conventional rice also. It is not exempt from that issue. But good quality rice is more consistent with conventional rice, and it does not yield like the Hybrid rice. But we could at least get rid of it. But with the Hybrid rice at this time, they need the bushels to get volume to help pay the bills, even as bad as the price is, and the chemicals they can spray on Hybrids help with some weed control in certain spots. And for those that don’t know, there are chemicals for conventional rice, and chemicals for Hybrid.
The newest threat that has been brought up is imported rice. Now it is 30% of our domestic market, with it going to 50% by 2033. It is not like it has not happened before. There have been two instances where the Rice Industry has imported rice before, Thai and Vietnam rice, somewhere around 15-20 years ago. And concerning the Vietnam rice, the powers that be were OK with that. If memory serves me right, I think that it was a private company that imported the rice and the rice industry didn’t have any say so over that. That importing of the Vietnam rice was brought up by the U S Rice Producers Association, the national organization run by farmers representing farmers. At the time, Vietnam rice was being raised and treated with chemicals we had outlawed before then and irrigated with water from canals that had raw sewage dumping in them. The organization that was charged with protecting the interests of the farmer/producer chose to sit idle on the sidelines, while farmers were mad at the idea why didn’t they buy local rice. From the 2011 bad milling article, we still have the same problem as back then. 15 years and no change. I understand that the last 3 years the quality issue has been discussed once, with no action taken in a meeting that happens a few times a year.
Rice Farmers, you have to do it yourself. Almost everyone knows someone to complain to about changing the way things are being done. Tell them you want a change of direction. Maybe focus on less bushels and better milling and quality. We can’t kick this can down the road any longer. Quality is the issue at hand.
To end this article with another comment from someone in the rice industry, they stated, “We don’t have enough good rice to blend with the bad rice”.
Kenneth Graves
Chairman, Arkansas Rice Growers Association
870-509-1050
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