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Arkansas farmer reduces acres and focuses on soybeans

A farmer in northeast Arkansas says his spring planting strategy has changed from last year.

Jeff Rutledge tells Brownfield he’s planting mostly soybeans, and less corn and rice than usual.

“Soybeans are pretty close to break even now that prices have come up a little bit. Corn and rice are still negative.”

Rutledge says he’s expecting an even greater decline in rice acres in Arkansas than what USDA forecasted in the latest Prospective Plantings report.

He also says he’s also planting fewer acres this spring, because the economics don’t justify farming it for himself this year, and there’s no farm successor.

“I’ve got a lot of family land, and I don’t see the need to risk losing that and the equity that we have in that just to be able to continue to farm.”

Rutledge says he got 80 percent of his crops planted the first week of April, even with a much-needed rain over the weekend. USDA’s first planting progress report of the season says 25 percent of Arkansas’ rice has been planted.

Planting has been made across other states in the Delta, with Tennessee’s corn planting 18 percent complete and Kentucky at six percent complete. Cotton planting is just starting in Tennessee.