Rains, flooding leave south Louisiana agriculture reeling

With harvest bearing down, south Louisiana producers were looking to close out a difficult 2016 growing season in a positive manner. Then, August rains arrived and flooding soon followed leaving mandatory evacuation orders, road closings and crops underwater. Indeed, for southwest Louisiana agriculture, the flooding is especially devastating. “About 75 percent of our rice is located in southwest Louisiana,” says Dustin Harrell, LSU AgCenter rice specialist. “A lot of the area got 18 to 24 – even more than 24 – inches of rain. That caused a lot of flooding, including rice fields. Water from many of the initial rains actually did begin to recede before backwater flooding moved in from bayous, streams and rivers.”