BATON ROUGE, La. -- Warm weather is helping the 2014 Louisiana rice crop after a cold, wet spring that delayed planting for many farmers.
"In general, the crop is off to a pretty good start," said Steve Linscombe, rice breeder and director of the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station. "It's probably a little bit later than average but not as late as last year, and last year we had the best crop we ever had," he said.
Linscombe told The Advocate (http://bit.ly/1uWuEKf) the state acreage may increase by 10,000 to 15,000 acres this year, compared with last year's total of 412,000 acres. Considerably more medium-grain rice is being grown in Louisiana, especially in north Louisiana, he said. "I've had several calls from producers planting medium-grain for the first time — or the first time in a long time."
Water allocation reductions in California where a large amount of medium-grain rice is grown had increased medium-grain acreage in other rice-growing states, Linscombe said.
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