Growers in southwestern Louisiana lost around $14 million in rice, based on the current farm-gate price, in the flooding that followed torrential rains over the weekend, estimated Dustin Harrell, a Louisiana State University rice specialist. In calculating the “highly speculative” figure, Harrell relied on suggestions that 17,200 acres of rice, or 4 percent of fields, would be lost.
The estimate “does not include infrastructure and equipment losses that will be significant to rice producers in the area,” said Harrell in a release carried by AgFax. Before the floods, Louisiana was forecast to harvest a record 33 million hundredweight of rice, nearly 14 percent of the U.S. crop.
“Estimating the economic impact on rice of the floods so far is not easy,” Harrell said. County agents told Harrell that 20 percent of the rice crop was not harvested in the three largest parishes in southwestern Louisiana, and that 20 percent of the unharvested rice would be a loss. Harrell combined the suggested loss rate with USDA data on rice land in Acadia, Jeff Davis and Vermilion parishes — 430,032 acres — and USDA’s estimates of rice yield per acre and average price, to arrive at his figure for the value of lost rice.
“With that approach, the estimated farm gate loss value to southwest Louisiana was approximately $14.3 million,” wrote Harrell. The estimate does not include losses to the ratoon, or second, crop that grows out of the roots and lower stem of the rice plant.