Mississippi Rice Variety Trials, 2017

The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in September 2017 estimated the harvested rice area in Mississippi to be 118,000 acres. In November 2017, however, the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) certified the 2017 area planted to rice in the state to be 114,568 acres. The FSA estimate is almost 80,000 acres or 41% less than the rice acreage in 2016 (194,000 acres) and 27% less than the average rice acreage (157,000 acres) for the preceding 5 years (Table 1).

In September 2017, NASS also forecasted the total rice production for Mississippi at 8.5 million hundredweight (431,819 metric tons), down 39% from the 2017 production of 13.9 million hundredweight (716,152 metric tons). At the October 2017 world rice price of $9.73 (U.S. dollars) per hundredweight, the value of Mississippi rice production for 2017 was $82.7 million. Rice yield, on the other hand, was forecasted to be 7,200 pounds per acre (160 bushels per acre), up 20 pounds from 2016 and 110 pounds more than the running 10- year Mississippi average yield of 7,091 pounds (158 bushels per acre). The record for statewide average yield, set in 2014, remains at 7,420 pounds per acre (165 bushels per acre or 8,316 kilograms per hectare).

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