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Harvest expected to wrap up early on Arkansas farm

An Arkansas farmer says harvest will most likely wrap up earlier than normal on her farm this year.

Kay Trice of Stuttgart says dry weather has allowed them to harvest rice, soybeans and corn without delay.

“Usually, you can count on a hurricane or something coming up from the gulf to give us water and that is not good because it can flatten our rice crop out and make it hard to harvest. But we haven’t had that this year, so harvest will probably end about October 15^th which is really early.”

As of Wednesday, 90% of their rice, 60% of their soybeans and all of their corn had been harvested.

She tells Brownfield while they are in an area of severe drought, irrigation has prevented any drastic yield impacts. But if the dry spell continues, next year’s crops will be affected since reservoirs are already dry.  

“We always have a 5-inch rain here and there that we can count on to fill our reservoirs to water our crops, and that hasn’t happened this year. We are in a drastic drought in Arkansas which is very unusual.”

This week Trice’s farm, known to locals as Sunset Farms, was inducted into the Arkansas Century Farm Program for being owned by the same family for at least 100 years.