July 14, 2008 12:13 pm
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By Mike Surbrugg
msurbrugg@joplinglobe.com
NEVADA, Mo. — Farmers in Southeast Missouri have 200,000 acres of rice, up 11 percent from 2007, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service office at Columbia.
A wet year is not bad for rice and a few Southwest Missouri farmers may have wondered if this is a signal to plant rice.
Not so, said Pat Miller, a University of Missouri Extension agronomist at Nevada. She was raised in a rice-growing area in Arkansas and passes along some thoughts about rice.
More than 10 years ago she was involved in looking at what could grow in pecan bottomland in Vernon County. Rice was planted and none came up, she said.
Rice paddies need to be flat and each surrounded by a low dike. The rice grows in water that is pumped into the paddies.
The water serves two useful purposes: Plants need water and the water is weed control, she said.
During the growing season, the water is circulated by opening and closing gates.
A lot of standing water can be home to water moccasin snakes and mosquitoes, she said. Residential lawns near rice fields have snakes and the mosquito population soars over a much larger area.
“Growing up, I never wore shorts or short sleeves in the summer,” she said. “You could see your legs turn black with mosquitoes. We would build a smoky fire to help protect horses from mosquitoes at night and towns often used foggers for mosquito control.”
Effects of rain
Closer to home, the excess rain has had a major impact on Missouri corn, soybeans and milo acres, according to the statistics service.
As of July 1, Missouri had 2.9 million acres of corn in fields.
That is down 16 percent from last year and 6 percent below expectations as recently as March 2008.
Corn expected to be available for grain is 2.5 million acres, down 23 percent from 2007. This is the lowest since 1998, said Gene Danekas, head of the Missouri agriculture statistics office.
The 400,000 acres of planted corn not expected to be harvested is the most abandoned planted acres since 1980, a drought year.
Missouri farmers still hope to have 5.3 million acres of soybeans, up 15 percent form 2007. If realized, it would be the largest planted soybean acreage since 1999 and is 200,000 more acres than expected in March, Danekas said.
Credit much of the increase in soybean acres to farmers unable to plant all the corn they desired. Soybeans can be planted later than corn. Some fields targeted for corn remain barren.
Missouri has 200,000 acres of milo, the same as in 2006 — the lowest number of planted acres since 1951.
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