YEAREND: Great yields a bright spot in a turbulent year
Creation of a Farm Bill to replace the current 2018 legislation has been a source of frustration in agriculture. Hard-pressed by high input prices, extremely low commodity prices, drought and hurricanes, farmers urged lawmakers to update the Farm Bill’s reference prices. Failing that, they pressed Congress for ad hoc aid. The additional effort failed in early December.
By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
Dec. 16, 2024
Fast facts
- Hopes for new Farm Bill languish
- Record, or near-record crop yields in Arkansas
- High inputs, uneven haying squeeze rancher profits
(1,551 words)
(Newsrooms: with file art of chickens, Forest Health Center groundbreaking; NERREC grand opening, corn, soybean basis chart, Hunter Biram, Harrison Pittman, Boozman/Stabenow)
LITTLE ROCK — A season of weather that enabled both early planting and harvest ended in record or near-record yields for several crops in Arkansas. But it wound up being overshadowed by low commodity prices and tumult surrounding development of the next Farm Bill and aid to farmers.
Ag law and policy
Creation of a Farm Bill to replace the current 2018 legislation has been a source of frustration in agriculture. Hard-pressed by high input prices, extremely low commodity prices, drought and hurricanes, farmers urged lawmakers to update the Farm Bill’s reference prices. Failing that, they pressed Congress for ad hoc aid. The additional effort failed in early December.
Hunter Biram, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said “it is very likely that the 2018 Farm Bill will once again see another extension.”
The ag committees of both the U.S. House and Senate have been working on a new Farm Bill.
Arkansas Sen. Boozman had been serving as the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, and will become its chair in January. Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has chaired the committee since 2021, announced her retirement. Her term ends in January.
Farmers were also watching the Environmental Protection Agency, which had pledged to give the Endangered Species Act a bigger role as it reviewed and approved pesticides. A federal judge also vacated registrations on some dicamba products.
Near year’s end, a federal judge in Texas put a temporary hold on the Corporate Transparency Act, which was expected to affect some 230,000 farm operations. CTA required businesses to file information about beneficial owners by Dec. 31.
In December, a federal judge in Arkansas put a 14-day restraining order on an Arkansas law that restricted foreign ownership of farmland. Plaintiffs said the law was unconstitutional. Similar laws intended to increase national and food security were enacted or under consideration in 48 states.
Arkansas became the first state to take an enforcement action under its law in 2023, ordering ChemChina to divest its holdings in Craighead County.
Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, called 2024 “a blockbuster year of court decisions and other legal developments.
“It’s hard to imagine how 2025 can top it, but I have a feeling it will,” he said.
Row crops
Arkansas growers were treated to a warm, dry spring enabling early planting. They
also saw dry weather in late summer, providing the grounds for a speedy harvest. In
between, the remnants of two hurricanes, Francine and Helene, caused damage to crops in spots.
Drought in the upper Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys dropped Mississippi River levels to near record-low levels at Memphis, Tennessee, by harvest time. The Coast Guard had to implement draft restrictions on barges at a time when they were to be filled with grain for export.
The river levels at Memphis rebounded slightly but sank to minus 6.59 feet by Dec. 12.
Arkansas soybean growers were expected to see a 55-bushel-per-acre average yield, a new record.
"Even though it’s a little better than last year, farmers are still hurting because commodity prices have declined, and the expenses are still higher,” said Jeremy Ross, professor and extension soybean agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Corn acres took a big drop in 2024 — 41 percent lower than the previous year. November's National Agricultural Statistics Service, or NASS, report showed 485,000 acres of corn were harvested with an expected state average yield of 186 bushels per acre. It was one bushel per acre less than the record.
“Both wheat and sorghum have a similar problem in Arkansas,” said Jason Kelley, extension wheat and feed grains agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
“You don’t have local markets for it. You can haul that most of the time to the Mississippi River, and there’s some other inland places a little closer taking it. But there are only about 10 places buying wheat here. And grain sorghum is really the same way.”
Arkansas cotton growers harvested 640,000 acres. Although this was a 30,000-acre decrease from spring projections, it was still a substantial increase of 135,000 acres over 2023 harvest numbers.
Arkansas peanuts experienced an explosion in acreage this year, rising by 10,000 acres over 2023’s reported acreage to 44,000 acres. Zachary Treadway, extension peanut and cotton specialist, said it’s likely that the expansion in acreage does not represent new growers moving into the crop, but rather the same growers expanding their peanut efforts.
NASS expected rice to end the season at 7,600 pounds per acre, 30 pounds shy of the record set in 2021.
“There are still no surprises on the rice side,” said Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the Division of Agriculture. “Unfortunately, milling yields aren’t represented in production estimates but will have a profound impact on rice supplies and markets this year.”
“Profitability isn’t in the 2025 vocabulary,” Hardke said.
Cattle/forage
Cattle prices remained high in 2024, but high input prices and weather-related forage
issues kept ranchers from seeing wide profit margins.
“With still-high input costs, we’re seeing a big pool of heifers into the feed yards, and guys aren’t purchasing heifers to raise and put back into our national herd, so our national herd numbers are still going down,” said Maggie Justice, assistant professor and extension beef cattle specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
A wet spring and dry summer made hay cuttings somewhat tenuous.
“In general, I would say statewide we were at 80 percent of our production potential, but in our really drought-affected areas we lost maybe half or more of our production,” said Jonathan Kubesch, extension forage specialist for the Division of Agriculture. “We had a lot of armyworm pressure dry spell and we were offset on our hay cut schedule.”
Poultry
The relentless march of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, kept the poultry
and dairy industry on edge in 2024.
However, as of mid-December, Arkansas saw no commercial HPAI infections in 2024, said Jada Thompson, assistant professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
She attributed Arkansas’ decrease in HPAI detections to its climate and geographical location. The current HPAI strain, H5N1, travels through wildlife along the Mississippi Flyway but does not do as well in warmer environments like Arkansas, Thompson noted.
The decrease in commercial infections does not mean Arkansas is out of the woods, as Dustan Clark, extension poultry health veterinarian for the Division of Agriculture, explained.
In December, three positive HPAI detections were found in backyard flocks in Lafayette, Craighead and Pope Counties.
Specialty crops
This year’s warm spring brought the strawberries out earlier than usual, leaving growers scrambling to let customers know they didn’t have to wait until near Mother’s Day for berries.
Strawberry growers may be dealing with “Neo-P,” “an emerging disease that made headlines in 2019 and 2020 when it was first reported to severely impact strawberry production in Florida,” said Aaron Cato, extension horticulture integrated pest management specialist for the Division of Agriculture.”
The disease poses no problem to people. Cato said Neo-P could be managed with good cultural control.
Jackie Lee, director of the Fruit Research Station, named this year’s blackberry season “early bird” because of the warm temps in February.
“I have never seen such a synchronous bloom in blackberries, and just so much, and so early,” Lee said during the annual Blackberry Field Day in June at the Division of Agriculture’s Fruit Research Station in Clarksville.
Looking back at the station’s weather data, the average temperature for February was 63 degrees. It was about 10 degrees higher than the previous two years in February, a month that also brought temperatures 10 to 15 degrees below normal in 2021. The higher temperatures this year “got blackberries off to a good start,” Lee said, and a dry April allowed the station to increase its experimental variety crossings.
Forestry
In 2024, it was win one, lose one for the forestry industry. In August, AHF Products
closed its Warren flooring plant, causing the loss of 130 jobs and an estimated decline of $36 million in the state’s gross domestic product, according to an analysis from
the Arkansas Center for Forest Business. However, in December, Weyerhaeuser announced
it was investing $500 million in the state-of-the-art TimberstrandÒ facility to produce
laminated strand lumber in Drew County.
The University of Arkansas at Monticello, also in Drew County and the state’s only forestry school, broke ground on its Arkansas Forest Health Research Center in October. During the event, state Attorney General Tim Griffin announced UAM would receive $1 million from his office to support the center.
Education
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture opened its first new rice
research center in a century on Aug. 30 when it cut the ribbon on the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center in Harrisburg. The location was
selected because of its soils and climate. The center’s silt loam soils are typical
for rice production in northeastern Arkansas, which allows the division to translate
research results for the region’s farmers more directly.
The Cooperative Extension Service also cut the ribbon on a new Greene County office.
Mention of product names does not imply endorsement by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media contact: Mary Hightower, mhightower@uada.edu