Louisiana farmers and their rice stand strong in the face of uncertainty

Story and photos by Alena Maschke 

​Christian Joseph Guinn is a rare breed in Louisiana. Unlike most of his fellow farmers, he doesn’t come from generations of growing rice in the fields of the Cajun Prairie. Instead, he decided early on that this was what he wanted to do. 
 
“I just always wanted to be around it,” Guinn said. Out of ten siblings raised in Mermentau, La., he’s the only one who went into farming full-time.
 
“I love planting something and really just watching it grow,” Guinn said, riding his truck along the edges of his crawfish and rice fields, where fledgling rice plants have begun to stretch their tender stems and blades of leaves toward the spring sun. 
 
It’s the beginning of rice season in South Louisiana and, so far, it’s looking to be a promising one.
 
“We had some fairly warm conditions, and the rice really looks good up to this point,” said Ronnie Levy, Louisiana rice specialist with the Louisiana State University AgCenter. 
 
The repeated cold spells of this year haven’t presented the most favorable conditions for rice, he noted, but the rice planted in the last two months seems to be chugging along nicely regardless. “It should start responding to the warmer temperatures, and hopefully we’ll get some sunlight.”
 
Working in the the sun, the cold, the muddy waters of his crawfish ponds, Guinn said he wouldn’t have it any other way. “Never in my life could imagine having to work in an office,” the 24-year-old said. Going into farming full time right after graduating high school, the field is his office now.
 
And Guinn approaches his trade with the analytical mindset of an accountant, albeit one in waders and overalls. He even took accounting classes at LSU Eunice to get a better grasp of the often difficult budgeting involved.
 
“That's the number one thing: to run a farming operation you have to keep your finances in check,” he said. “And it's just getting tougher and tougher every year.”
 
And every year, there are new uncertainties farmers have to confront. This year, changes in U.S. trade policy are likely to affect the import and export of Louisiana rice, as well as the cost of equipment and materials necessary for production, many of which are imported from overseas.
 
“When you see where some of these products come from, it makes you worry,” Guinn said. 
 
Urea is an example of an import product that has seen significant price fluctuations as a result of geopolitical dynamics, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that followed, which sent prices for the fertilizer skyrocketing in 2022. Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of urea. Recently announced tariffs are likely to have a similar effect on equipment and other farming essentials imported from abroad.
 
“If the commodity price doesn't go up for next crop year, and we see a drastic increase in inputs again, like we've seen in the previous years, then we might be in even bigger of a bind than we are this year,” Guinn said. Current barrel prices for rice are below what he needs just to break even, he noted.
 
Barrel prices are the side of the equation where tariffs provide some hope to farmers like Guinn. 
 
The U.S. is both an exporter and an importer of rice. In 2023, a third of the country’s domestic use of rice was fed by imports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, 40-45% of domestically produced rice is shipped overseas.
 
But selling rice domestically yields better returns for farmers, Guinn notes, and tariffs on other rice-producing countries could increase the percentage of rice sold domestically. 
 
With tariffs increasing the cost of imports and potential retaliatory trade actions by other countries making it more difficult for U.S. farmers to export their rice, more of it may end up being sold on the domestic market. “If we could sell as much rice domestically as possible, I think that's our biggest price advantage,” Guinn said. 
 
“It's always a concern when you start limiting markets, but there is still a growing population, a big demand,” Levy said. And, he notes, “producers are typically optimistic.”
 
With a livelihood that depends on the whims of Mother Nature at least as much as it does on the ever-changing tides of the global economy, a healthy dose of optimism is necessary for survival. “Farmers have that uncertainty every day with the weather,” Levy said. “The best thing they can do is look at: what do I have control over.”
 
When it comes to his fields, Guinn is turning the dials the best he can. Cut back on some fertilizers here and some bird treatment there, just enough to save some money without threatening his crop.
 
And despite all the challenges of farming, the uncertainty and hard work, Guinn said he’s in it for the long run. “If God lets me, I’ll be doing this the rest of my life.”