Two feet of rainfall over the weekend put the rice harvest in jeopardy in Louisana, the No. 3 rice state in the country. The deluge drove up futures prices by 6 percent on Monday, the largest one-day gain in five years, said Reuters. The rain flooded rice fields ready for harvest, according to a Louisiana State University rice researcher, and came on the heels of a USDA forecast of a record crop in the Pelican State.
Louisiana was forecast to grow 33 million hundredweight of rice, or nearly 14 percent of the U.S. crop, also forecast to be record-large, at 244.3 million hundredweight. Arkansas was forecast to reap a record 118 million hundredweight, nearly half of the U.S. total, followed by California with 49 million hundredweight of rice. The USDA forecast was based on condition on Aug 1.
Analyst Jack Scoville of Price Futures Group told Reuters, “All you have to do is look on TV. It’s all the flooding that’s doing a number on a lot of rice fields in southern Louisiana.” In its weekly Crop Progress report, USDA said 55 percent of Louisiana’s rice crop was harvested as of Sunday, 14 points ahead of normal.