Francine slows harvest, impacts quality for Arkansas crops

“It’s going to be a long fall.” That’s how Cross County Extension Staff Chair Jenna Martin described the agricultural aftermath of Tropical Storm Francine. The storm recently hit Arkansas, dropping up to 9 inches of rain and producing crop-damaging wind gusts of up to 35 miles per hour.

The wind and rain mean that Arkansas row crop growers are facing a longer harvest and lowered quality for rice, cotton, soybeans and corn.

Lodged, or flattened, rice takes longer to harvest, said Jarrod Hardke, Extension rice agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. This, paired with the yield loss associated with sprouted rice, means rice growers are facing their already thin profit margins shrinking even more.

Hardke said parts of Poinsett, Cross and St. Francis counties seem to have taken the hardest hit.

The hardest hit areas for cotton seem to be around Jackson and Poinsett counties, said Zachary Treadway, Extension cotton and peanut agronomist for the Division of Agriculture. In those areas it was pretty common to see plants on the ends of rows laying over or at least leaning.

Treadway said leaning plants should straighten up with time, but for plants completely blown over, those bolls can be expected to rot.