Celebrate Arkansas-grown rice during September’s National Rice Month
By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture
Sept. 4, 2025
Fast Facts:
- September is National Rice Month
- Arkansas is No. 1 rice-producing state in the country; growers planted more than 1.44 million acres of rice in 2024
- Rice is grown in 40 Arkansas counties
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LITTLE ROCK — Though Arkansas is the No. 1 producer of rice in the United States, Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said he often hears from residents who don’t know the crop is being grown in their own backyard.
“I still get the question, ‘What are those things out there in the field?’ And I say, ‘You mean the levees? It’s what we use to control water,’” Hardke said. “That can be from somebody who literally lives in eastern Arkansas and has been around them their entire life and still doesn’t know that that’s rice. It still comes up routinely.”
In 2024, Arkansas rice growers harvested 1.43 million acres at a state record average yield of 7,640 pounds per acre. In the same year, Arkansas accounted for 49.3 percent of total U.S. rice production and 49.9 percent of the total acres planted in the country.
Hardke said Arkansas is an ideal place to grow rice because of the state’s climate and the type of soil found in the Delta region, as well as in the Arkansas, Ouachita and Red River Valleys in the west and southwest areas of the state.
“This heavy clay, mucky soil is designed to hold water, and much of the growing region over here, that’s what it excels at,” Hardke said.
Challenges for rice growers
Though rice is “unbelievably resilient” and can “put up with a great deal of abuse and surprise growers with how much we can still yield,” Hardke said unpredictable weather is the biggest challenge rice producers face.
“The Arkansas climate is very good for rice, but climate and weather are two different topics,” Hardke said. “Climate being the longer-term trend, and weather being the short-term occurrences that exist as a part of that. Weather events provide some interesting trials for rice and rice growers.”
Sudden changes in weather — such as going from extremely wet conditions to extremely dry, or extremely cool to extremely hot — “constantly create management difficulties,” Hardke said.
“Those little shocks to the system at the wrong time can have a major impact on rice development and production,” Hardke said. “That continues to be an extreme annual battle for rice growers.”
To combat this, Hardke said Arkansas growers and researchers in the region’s rice industry are working to “minimize reliance on groundwater” and “continuing to ever increase our irrigation and water use efficiency.”
“There are also ongoing breeding efforts to continue instilling greater tolerances in rice, both to the climate — to extreme temperatures — and pests and diseases,” Hardke said. “Things like that are constantly in development, with an eye towards increased stability of the crop.”
Hardke said ensuring consistent production has become “the name of the game” within the agriculture industry at large.
“Margins are so extremely tight that there’s very little tolerance for less-than-optimal outcomes, from a production standpoint,” Hardke said. “Everybody wants to make the highest yield possible. But as much as anything, focusing on making roughly what growers can predict they can make, so they can work toward that goal and hit that mark — that’s what’s really required to stay in business in this current climate.”
Where does Arkansas rice go?
Though it fluctuates year to year, Hardke said there is generally a 50-50 split between domestic and export use of Arkansas rice. Recently, he said, this has trended a bit more towards 60 percent domestic, 40 percent export.
“A lot of the Arkansas rice grown certainly goes to table rice, whether that be milled white or brown rice,” Hardke said. “A very large amount of our rice goes into making beer. That’s typically considered number one.”
Other avenues include food service and prepared foods, such as rice that goes into making puffed rice dessert bars or protein bars, as well as the pet food markets.
Hardke said Arkansas “casts a decently wide net on where we export,” which includes Central and South America and the Gulf region and well as to parts of Europe and Africa.
Impacting Arkansas — and the world — beyond the rice fields
Arkansas’ rice industry “goes far beyond just the rice fields being grown,” Hardke said.
“So much of the infrastructure of what happens to our rice, whether it’s 50 percent or more of that rice that’s used here domestically, that rice is being delivered to mills and processing centers here in the state of Arkansas,” Hardke said. “Growers aren’t milling the rice themselves.
“Those are all the other jobs: trucking and moving the grain around in the mills and processing facilities and prepared food facilities, creating all of the end-use products,” he said. “That creates so many jobs beyond just the farm level. That happens here.”
Hardke, who was raised on a rice and soybean farm that he still calls home, said it’s critical for Arkansans to understand where their food comes from and the monumental task of the farmers who grow it.
“We are not as far removed as everyone likes to think from a time when food certainty was not a given,” Hardke said. “Everyone had a hand in at least some portion of literally providing their own nutrition. We’re talking less than 100 years ago.”
According to the American Farm Bureau Foundation, farm and ranch families now comprise less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.
“With that 2 percent, we’re not just talking about row crop production,” Hardke said of the statistic. “We’re talking about all of it: meat, eggs, grain, everything.”
“We’re permitted as a population, as a world, to advance and do some of the fantastic things that we’re doing because there’s still a small percentage of the population producing all of the food, feed and fiber for us,” Hardke said. “When you start looking at it through that lens, I don’t know how there can’t be a greater appreciation for agriculture.
“I’m not saying everybody has to get out there and get in the mud with us, but there should be this understanding — that all of the rest of this is possible, the advances of humankind — because of what agriculture has been able to do,” Hardke said.
To learn more about Arkansas rice, visit the Rice Production in Arkansas page on the Cooperative Extension Service website or visit the Rice Discovery Program at the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center in Harrisburg, Arkansas.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three campuses.
Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.
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Media Contact:
Rebekah Hall
rkhall@uada.edu
@RKHall_
501-671-2061