This year, the amount of land used to grow rice in Arkansas fell under 1 million acres for the first time in decades – its lowest point in about half a century. To those in the industry, like Robert Stobaugh, this speaks to the persistent challenges rice farmers are facing.
Stobaugh runs Stobaugh Brothers Farms in Central Arkansas with his family.
Despite tough times, he and other rice farmers are passionate about their work — they don’t want to do anything else. Ultimately, they just want their situation to improve at a time when rice is selling for cheap but is expensive to produce.
Sitting in his big rig, Stobaugh discussed his financial troubles. He used to farm 1,500 acres of rice, but this year, many of those fields had soybeans instead.
“It declined by a third this year. We only have 1,100 [acres]. And it’s simple economics. We could not afford to lose any more money than that,” Stobaugh said. “We knew we were planting, at best, at best, a breakeven crop in March and April.”
Jarrod Hardke is a row crop expert with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service. According to him, one of the biggest issues faced by rice farmers like Stobaugh is high gas prices egged on by the war in Iran. Rice, he says, is a particularly fuel-intensive crop.
“Very early in the year, it was still, ‘Well, we still might plant a million acres.’ [It was] still possible — maybe not likely — but it still seemed possible,” Hardke said. “And then we reached March, and let’s just put it as world events happened. And suddenly fuel and fertilizer prices start screaming upward which have a profound impact on agriculture in general, especially rice.”
Another headwind for American farmers is overseas competition. Over the last two decades, Americans have consumed more aromatic rice varieties, like basmati or jasmine. These typically come from foreign markets, Hardke said.
American rice farmers are playing a different game than their foreign counterparts. Rice production in other countries is heavily subsidized. Some governments guarantee prices for farmers and shoulder a significant portion of production costs. These policies can undercut American rice, and increased imports mean a greater supply of the grain in the U.S. which can drive prices down.
Rice was selling for very little earlier this year — below breakeven levels. Producers, like Stobaugh, were planting knowing they would likely lose money.
Farmers are price-takers, not price-makers, as the saying goes. They don’t set prices for the rice they grow.
Take a pair of cowboy boots, for example. If production costs go up, the boot-maker can pass some of that cost on to consumers by charging more. Farmers have far less ability to do that. Here’s how Alvaro Durand-Morat, a rice economist at the University of Arkansas, puts it.
“That is why markets exist, to discover prices, among other things. So prices are discovered in the market based on the demand that there is for rice at any given point in time given by the supply,” he said. “If I had to put it in a sentence, I would say that the price of rice in the U.S. is defined by, by market forces.”
USDA prices and commodities markets provide a snapshot of this push and pull between rice suppliers and buyers, Durand-Morat said. But those prices aren’t set in stone.
Farmers have also been contending with extremely hot temperatures, which can lead to lower quality rice. 2026 was Arkansas’ 10th-hottest summer on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The dip below 1 million rice farming acres is a significant threshold for the crop. Hardke called it a “glass floor.”
“We actually ended up in Arkansas with a few more rice acres than what we anticipated going into the year,” Hardke said. “Were it not for a slightly favorable turn kind of late in the planning window this spring there was question and concern if we would be over 800,000 acres at one point.
If this trend continues, Hardke said, Arkansas is at risk of losing some rice farming infrastructure for good.
“If we don’t see some return in rice acres fairly quickly, you have to start having concern and wonder for infrastructure throughout the Delta and eastern Arkansas that supports the rice industry specifically,” he said. “It’s near impossible to get it back.”
According to a USDA report, the rice harvest in Arkansas was 98% complete on October 11. It’s still a bit early to know the quality of the harvest and how producers fared financially.
Kelly Robbins, executive director of the Arkansas Rice Federation, is optimistic the crop will bounce back. Or, at least, that the state will find better ways to weather the storm.
“Hopefully this is a blip, but in the meantime, we're going to continue to work to make our elected officials and policy makers aware of the current situation.” Robbins said. “[We will] continue to ask for their help and policies and ask for their assistance and some economic assistance that we need in the short term.”
But farmers are feeling the crunch right now. High input costs, an increasingly difficult global market, and low crop prices are causing farms to fold, Stobaugh says.
“There are some people who have given up,” Stobaugh said. “And you can look at the statistics — and it's out there. Farm suicides are way up there. Farm bankruptcies [are] way up there. But everybody's still eating.”
Those struggling with their mental health can call or text the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for support.
