AgCast 212: Inside the Research Center Driving U.S. Rice Production, Lessons from the Delta, Part 4

Audio Transcription:

Tim Burcham: Arkansas, typically 46 to 50% of all the long grain in the United States of America. And we’re telling you half of that comes from just these five counties here.

Chad Fiechter: Welcome back to the Purdue Commercial AgCast and our Lessons from the Delta series. I’m Chad Fiechter. Todd and I spent several days traveling through the Mississippi Delta last summer talking with farmers, researchers, and industry leaders about how production systems in the region work.

In the first few episodes of the series, we explored how farming systems and the Mississippi Delta differ from what many Midwestern producers are used to — from the unique economics of rice, Delta farmland values, to how rice is processed and marketed after harvest. If you haven’t had a chance to hear those yet, I’d encourage you to go back and take a listen.

One thing that became clear in those conversations is that rice production is highly specialized system. Managing water, selecting varieties and optimizing yields requires a tremendous amount of coordination.

That’s what led us to our next stop on the trip. The Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center located in Poinsett County, Arkansas. Facilities like this play a key role in agricultural innovation, connecting university research to farmers and private companies to test new varieties, production practices, and irrigation technologies.

We started asking Tim Burcham, the center’s director, to explain what this facility does and why it was built here.

So can you introduce yourself and tell us where you are?

Tim Burcham: Yes. Hey, I’m Tim Burcham, I’m the director of the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center, located just south of Jonesboro and just north of Harrisburg, Arkansas. With the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. I’ve been on board in this position since 2019.

The farm, the total property, 600 acres. There’s 500 acres in tillable ground. The rice research mile, and it literally is one mile from my driveway to RiceTec up here. The cool thing about that rice research mile is, is that with us having Nutrien’s plots here, Horizon Ag’s plots here, University of Arkansas plots here, and then all of RiceTec’s varieties at their shop one mile away. In this mile, you can view all the prominent rice in the Mid-South. Every, every variety that is grown in the Mid-South or is potentially being looked at as a forward variety. You can come to this place. And that place, and by that I mean my friends at RiceTec. And you, you’re seeing every, every variety that the Mid-South plants. Pretty cool.

Aaron Shew: RiceTec is a particularly, a very important player in rice because they’re the primary hybrid.

Tim Burcham: It’s very expensive to, to, uh, you know, to create a hybrid variety.

And, and they have, you know, perfected that craft. And, uh, so they control upwards of 60 to 70% of the rice acres. Long grain rice acres in Arkansas.

Purchased this property in 2018. Everything you see today has happened since 2019. So I’m happy to say that, you know, after five long years, we, we opened the doors, August 30th was our grand opening in 2024. So we’ve not even been in the building a year. We bought the, bought the farm in 18, uh, 600 acres. It’s basically a section, it’s a section with a corner cutoff of it. So we’re a mile long and a mile wide.

The soil type here is Henry silt loam with a little bit of Callaway. And the key thing in locating the station clearly was highway one frontage here, uh, west side of the ridge, which is a Cash River critical groundwater area. So that ridge is really important because on the eastern side of the ridge, you know, you’re 60 feet down, you’re in the Mississippi Alluvial Aquifer, and quite a bit of water.

Over here, uh, in this critical groundwater area that, that ridge forms an aqualine and the Mississippi Alluvial struggles, to get over here, if you will. Uh, so we we’re drilling down maybe, I think I did a test well before we put our deep well in and we hit a good lens of water, you know, gravel at like 190 and it went to 220.

So about a 30 foot seam of gravel that’s, you know, high yield water. But that water’s declining in this area, uh, due to heavy rice production.

Other part of this is we’re in Poinsett County and between Poinsett County and Jackson County, it varies from year to year, but that’ll be the number one rice producing county in the United States, not just Arkansas. And so then when you draw a five county area around us in northeast Arkansas, ’cause many people ask, why’d you build a new station in northeast Arkansas? When you drive, draw that five counties north of I 40, you have half of the half that we supply for the United States.

So Arkansas, typically 46 to 50% of all the long grain in the United States of America. And we’re telling you half of that comes from just these five counties here. So very high, um, rice acreage here. And this Henry silt loam is a primary driver for that. So we’re in the soil type that is predominant for this five county area.

We’re having to deal with the same water issues that the farmers in this area are having to deal with. You’re gonna see numerous reservoirs, including our own. So water, of course, for rice production is critical and right now you’re seeing a lot of, on the west side of the ridge, which is where we are, you’re seeing a lot of reservoirs being put in.

Mentioned the reservoir area is the 32 acre reservoir, and we’re bordered on the entire western border with the L’Anguille River, and it’s really a cut through. That was a part when we looked at the purchase, uh, it was a farm that had all these features. Location, location, location. On the west side of the ridge, Henry silt loam soil. A reservoir. But was largely unimproved from an irrigation standpoint.

So we’ve got 3.1 miles underground pipeline. I’m adding some more this year being another thousand feet added to that. We’ve got two river red lifts back there on the L’Anguille River. We just have one deep well, and it actually only came online in like ’23, so I, I did nothing but surface water for the first two or three years.

The fields are divided up as 21 fields here. So the Rice Research and Promotion Board, uh, group, at that time, they wanted us to be able to do field level research, and we’ve already are accomplishing that.

So we have six zero grade fields, and then the majority of the others are graded to a 10th. We have four fields that are at oh three or you know, what I call quasi zeros. So that created 13 miles of roads.

So we have flow meters on every outlet in the field, so most of the fields have at least one riser, but many of the fields, the heavier research fields have multiple risers in there. And then we put a flow meter on every outlet. So we measure, every drop of water goes on, whether it’s the lease farmer’s land or a research project. We have Aquarius telemetry on all 21 fields. So whether you’re in flooded environment with a depth sensor and or a uh, subterranean with, uh, tensiometers. Uh, and a nice thing about that Aquarius system is that they do kind of a radio link. So we have one receiver behind the shop here, up on the pole, you got good line of sight. So I only pay one sailor bill, which is much better on the cost savings side.

But again, the beauty of that is you, you pick your phone up and you can look at the moisture sensing, uh, of every field.

Todd Kuethe: Now are, are farms in this part of the country also running similar sort of technology?

Tim Burcham: Yes. The, the farmers in this region, I would call most of our, our farmers, pretty tech savvy. And the reason is, is, I mean, you guys know what the labor situation is and so anything that they can do that enhances their ability to monitor. ‘Cause you know, an average rice farmer here is gonna be in the. I call a small farmer 4,000 acres and that goes up to 20,000 acres. So, and they won’t own 20,000 acres. But they’ll own and lease up to 20,000 acres.

Chad Fiechter: One of the things that stood out during our visit was just how different rice production systems are compared to the corn and soybean systems most Midwest farmers are familiar with.

Tim Burcham: You’re gonna have your rotation. So unlike some of the other parts of the Delta, get into some of the, some of the clay ground, and it’s gonna be rice after rice, after rice. But in this area, we’re, we really are a good rotation base. Because, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re running from that mutation in the, in the weed population. So the, the soybean rice rotation really extends your capacity with regard to your weed management program. So that’s what we’re trying to do here. So in the Provisia world, you go Provisia then you follow that with Clearfield, then you would follow that by two years of beans in the perfect world.

Aaron Shew: So it’s a four year rotation.

Tim Burcham: Yeah. In the perfect world, but most people, if they get into Provisia they probably would do in a three year rotation. Mm-hmm. You can, you, it wouldn’t hurt you on the plant side.

Aaron Shew: Is it a herbicide. So red rice

Tim Burcham: Yes.

Speaker 6: Is what a lot of this is gonna deal with. So it’s literally red rice.

Tim Burcham: Provisia has control on red rice and some of the other grasses. Barnyard grass, I think it has some capacity.

Aaron Shew: And Clearfield’s been around longer than Provisia. But, uh, it’s a big, big problem. It’s really hard to get rid of.

Tim Burcham: The big problem there was is red rice and, you know, not as big a problem in Arkansas as say, our neighbors to the south.

Todd Kuethe: The weeds that you mentioned, are they the same like we’d have in our soybean fields like water, hemp, et What are, what is it? Is it different down here, what they’re worried about?

Aaron Shew: You’ll get some of that too. I mean, pigweeds gonna be the big one with soybeans, but in general, like rice is totally different.

Tim Burcham: Yeah. It’s Barnard grass.

Aaron Shew: They’re all water. Water weeds.

Tim Burcham: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. Stuff I’ve never heard of.

Aaron Shew: All the, the sedge

Tim Burcham: Sedges and barnard grass is a big one.

Aaron Shew: and barnard grass.

Tim Burcham: Coffee beans.

Aaron Shew: It comes outta that water and it literally spreads a canopy over the rice. And just like shades it out.

Tim Burcham: Yep.

Aaron Shew: Um, and it’s tough too.

Tim Burcham: It’s a monster.

Aaron Shew: It is a like, you get out and start yanking on it. It’s, it’s a tough weed.

Tim Burcham: So yeah, the barnyard grass, if you were to interview any rice farmer here, they’re gonna say barnyard grass is absolutely the number one problem we’re facing right now.

Then after that would be sedges. Sedges can be, also, can be very difficult to handle.

FMC has a new herbicide that the university has been testing for a number of years. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s still waiting approval and it, it will be our first new mode of action in over, over a decade.

Todd Kuethe: So I guess I should just ask a much simpler version, which is, these are different weeds than what

Tim Burcham: That’s correct.

Todd Kuethe: our farmers in Indiana are fighting in their fields?

Aaron Shew: Correct.

Tim Burcham: Keep in mind that the reason you flood rice is for weed control and the weed control there, that the original aspect of that weed control was to pigweed and some of the weeds you’re talking about. In the upland crops, they can’t handle an anaerobic environment. But of course then as you get going along, you bring along the aquatic weeds that can and do thrive in a flooded environment. But the real reason you flood rice is for weed control.

Chad Fiechter: So while flooded rice is still the dominant system, research here is shaping how farmers understand how newer production systems like row rice might fit in their operations.

Tim Burcham: Row rice, ROW, not to get my southern slang. So row rice is probably 20% of the acres in Arkansas right now. And so row rice production, we’ve got a graded field. We’re gonna put the boards in the drain at the bottom. We’ll let the bottom third of the field flood up just like it’s a flooded environment. I mean, why not? Rice loves it. Weeds don’t like it as much.

You got a middle part of the field that transitions depending on when you let water in and rainfall events. And then you got the upper third of the field that is truly upland. Okay. It’ll just be furrow. You’ll just see wet marks going down through the furrows. And our research is really looking at particularly the fertilization aspect of that upland.

You know, you can have all fertilization losses there that you don’t have in the flooded portion, because basically when you put, you know, fly urea on into a flooded environment, you lose virtually none of it. I mean, it’s, it’s maintained in the flood.

While fertilize sitting on top of the ground, it starts volitalizing as soon as it starts melting into the soil. So, so there are some aspects of row rise production that, you know, we’re having to deal with. And how do you apply nitrogen to maximize yield based on those three zones in that, uh, production system.

Aaron Shew: And the other piece that’s always, uh, harvest time, right. Think about moisture content drying down your field

Tim Burcham: Yep.

Aaron Shew: And getting consistency from top to bottom.

Tim Burcham: Yep.

Aaron Shew: And so trying to play with the fertility and then the dry down and like trying

Tim Burcham: to all

Aaron Shew: that

Tim Burcham: Right.

Has a huge variation.

Aaron Shew: Yes. Yeah.

Tim Burcham: I mean, if you, if I got a flooded field, a zero field, like I’ll show you today.

And when I pull the boards on it. Pull the boards, meaning we’re draining it. When we drain that field, then all of it’s gonna desiccate simultaneously. But in a row rise field, when I pull the boards, the bottom starts draining, and then it’s at one moisture content. This up here is at a whole nother moisture content, a lot lower. It’s dropping fast. And so yeah, there’s some aspects there.

The key thing that people like about it is, you don’t have to pull levees. So you guys drove by today, I’m sure they saw cascade flood. We talked about it where it looked like the whole field was nothing but levees.

Aaron Shew: Mm-hmm.

Tim Burcham: And then you saw straight levees. Those are graded fields. When you see a straight as an arrow levee, that means that field’s is grated. But these fields that you saw that were just classic cascade, you know, where it’s just curly slope after curly slope. Yeah, those, you know,

Aaron Shew: that’s a lot of work.

Tim Burcham: That’s a lot of work on, on uh, your levees, right.

Over here in this silt loam, I can pull a levee that’s reasonable in two passes with a levee plow. I get over in Mississippi County into gumbo clay, and that’s six passes. So you can imagine the machinery cost of pulling those levees. And then we call those 30 minute soils over there. That means if 30 minutes were their ideal to work. Yeah. It’s usually during lunch. So they’re, they’re their own animal.

We create the levees. We go ahead and flat plant the rice. We’ll get it up to two or three, four leaf, something like that. Okay. And then you pull the levies. Rice continues to grow. You get it up there where you’re ready to put the first shot of nitrogen on, you fly the nitrogen on, and then we hit it, we flood it. Which preserves all that nitrogen. Ideally you want to fly the plane at nine, flooded at 10. That day. Because you’re, yeah. Every, every moment that grains laying on the soil. Mm-hmm. And we’re putting Agrotain on there to reduce that. So you, you’ve got some time with Agrotain coating on the urea, but yeah,

Aaron Shew: You don’t want take the risk.

Tim Burcham: Ideally, you’re coming, the airplane goes by, I turn the water on. So, so imagine those fields that you saw running, each one of those levees, six times with a 360 horsepower tractor. It’s time, time, time, time.

Aaron Shew: Or you can drag some furrows.

Tim Burcham: Yeah.

Aaron Shew: And just plant.

Tim Burcham: That’s right. And so when, when you do it,

Aaron Shew: So there’s a big economic tradeoff.

Tim Burcham: When you do it with the standard row rise model, just you take all of that outta play. If, if it’s a graded field. And you just pull a polypipe across the top, turn the water on, go ski that weekend, come back, turn the water off. It’s, it’s, it’s watered.

So you’re gonna take a small yield hit. But the ones that implement this, they’re willing to take the yield hit for the quality of life.

Aaron Shew: And cost savings.

Tim Burcham: And cost too.

Water usage, not really much difference. We, we’ve not found that it’s a huge water saver, but there’s still ongoing research in that regard.

The commercial farmers, they’re gonna, they’re gonna also seed the levee when they pull the levee. Actually the levee plows have a seed box on them. That rice will be at a little bit different stage, but because it’s up on that levee, it ends up coming in at about the same time and they’ll harvest it. They’ll harvest the levees. I mean, think about those fields you saw where, where there were curlys everywhere. If you didn’t harvest the levees you’d lose half the field.

When you look at the, the rice crop in the United States, and I compare it to the corn crop in the United States or the soybean crop of the United States or the wheat crop in the United States. It’s a small player.

For Arkansas, it’s a huge player. Although we certainly have more acres in soybean than we do rice. A lot of people don’t realize that, but we do. But it’s, it’s small. And so when we go to the Rice Technical Working Group meeting that’s held every other year, I mean, when you come to that meeting, you’re gonna see everybody that’s in rice. Talking about you were talking about, we’re all academics. So everybody that’s in rice is gonna be at that meeting. So that’s gonna be University of Arkansas, LSU, California Davis, Texas, uh, a little bit of Mississippi. Missouri’s got a little bit of rice. Believe it or not Florida’s got a little bit of rice now.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, interesting.

Tim Burcham: But Florida’s total rice is less than one farmer here.

Aaron Shew: The other very interesting thing I found with rice, there’s a lot of rice consumed globally. Yeah. And, uh, so, so it is a, it’s kind of like, it’s very small in the U.S. but on the global playing field, it’s a huge, huge, huge player.

Tim Burcham: But growing rice is like being in the dairy business. Dairy business is 24 7. Growing rice is 24 7. I mean, there’s never a day that something doesn’t have to be done in rice, which contrast to corn and soybean.

I mean, soybean. You just plant it and forget it. I mean, I’m gonna go spray it twice. I’m done. Water it a couple times. Rice, plant it. Put the water on. Manage the water. Start the fertilization program. Get it to green ring. Put my final boot shot on. Pull the water down, go in and harvest. Mm-hmm. Tear the levees down. And so there’s, it’s just a continuous cycle of, you know, levees break. You have a big rain, you have a levees that erode away. You gotta go back out there and wait out in the mud and fix it. It’s just a very labor intensive crop. Compared to traditional row crops.

And I would add to that, that the herbicide resistance, the issues that we’re facing and the tools that we don’t have in our toolbox right now, add to that. Significantly.

Chad Fiechter: That was our visit to the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center in Arkansas.

Seeing how much infrastructure and collaboration goes into understanding efficient rice production really reinforces how different farming systems can be across the region, even within the United States.

Our visit to the Northeast Arkansas Rice Research and Extension Center gave us a firsthand look at the scale and complexity of rice production in the Delta — from water management and irrigation systems to the research that supports one of the most important rice producing regions in the United States.

But while we were out visiting farms and research sites during this trip, we also had some of those unplanned moments.

Next week on the podcast, we’ll share a conversation we had right in the middle of a field with someone we jokingly started calling the robot lady — Sarah Hinkley, the CEO and co-founder of Barn Owl Precision Ag. Her company is building small autonomous robots designed to move through fields and perform precision weeding between plants.

It was a fascinating look at how automation might change labor, weed management, and farm technology in the years ahead.

So be sure to subscribe to the Purdue Commercial AgCast and join us next week for that conversation.

We’re also sharing video clips from each stop on the trip over on our YouTube channel, so you can see some of those places firsthand. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.