U.S. growers will harvest a record 7.78 million tonnes (245 million hundredweight) of rice, says the USDA, a hefty 6-percent increase from the projection made a month ago, thanks to larger plantings and higher yields. The larger crop is likely to depress the season-average price 5 percent from the $12.30 per hundredweight (100 pounds) for this marketing year, which ends July 31.
The record U.S. crop would be part of a record-setting world crop, projected at 481.2 million tonnes in 2016/17, up 2 percent from the current crop, said the monthly Rice Outlook. U.S. exports are expected to expand slightly in the new marketing year. Worldwide, the stocks-to-use ratio, a gauge of the adequacy of supplies, would remain an ample 22.3 percent.
Domestic rice plantings of 3.2 million acres are 23-percent larger than in 2015. That’s the largest plantings since the record of 3.6 million acres in 2010, when the current record for rice production was set at 243 million hundredweight, according to USDA data.
Growers in California planted 564,000 acres of rice this year, up 33 percent from last year and the largest area since 2013. “Although the water-availability situation has improved the California growing area, much of the state is still experiencing drought,” said USDA.