By Ryan McGeeney
U of A System Division of Agriculture
LITTLE ROCK — As the world prepared to celebrate the turn of a new year, extension soybean agronomist Jeremy Ross picked up his phone.
“One farmer called me on New Year’s Eve to say he was shutting down, and it really surprised me. He had a good yield, but he just couldn’t swing it another year,” Ross said.
HIGH YIELDS, LOW PROFITS — The 2024 growing season presented many reasons to celebrate. Every major row crop in Arkansas, including corn, cotton, soybeans and rice — saw record average yields. Global market trends, however, including production from competing countries, elevated input costs and depressed commodity prices, mean most American growers will see little if any profit. (Division of Agriculture image.)
The 2024 growing season presented many reasons to celebrate. Every major row crop in Arkansas, including corn, cotton, soybeans and rice — saw record average yields.
Global market trends, however, including production from competing countries, elevated input costs and depressed commodity prices, mean most American growers will see little if any profit.
Like nearly every other crop, market prices for soybeans in 2024 failed to keep up with production costs. Per-bushel prices fell to an average of $10.80, a $1.25 decline from forecast prices earlier in the spring. Ross, who works for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said that in the squeeze between market forces, some farmers may be considering leaving the industry.
“There’s still some talk of some people not having a crop in 2025,” Ross said.
“I’ve heard from several others in the same situation,” he said. “And this isn’t just in Arkansas. Talking with my counterparts in other states, they’re hearing the same thing, in the Mid-South and the Midwest.”
Scott Stiles, extension agricultural economist for the Division of Agriculture, agreed that some producers will likely leave agriculture.
“No doubt we’ll see a few more farm auctions this winter,” Stiles said. “The ag lenders say growers have been really slow to come into their office. I think the farmers have been going to their accountant first, and waiting to see what kind of assistance may be coming from Washington.
“The American Relief Act provided some economic help,” he said. “But for soybeans, for example, the expected payment is $29.50 an acre. Cotton might get a payment of $87 per acre. For the majority of growers, these payments aren’t going to bring them to profitability.”
Stiles said the fact that many farmers don’t own the land they farm makes profitability more difficult to achieve.
“If you owned all your farmland, at today’s prices, you might be able to pencil out a profit,” Stiles said. “But the problem is that most growers are tenant farmers. They have to pay a share or some cash rent. In today’s price environment, it takes some really strong yields just to break even.”
Stiles said that, as an example, if a producer is paying a 20 percent share of his crop sales to a landlord, that grower would need to average 62 bushels an acre in soybeans or 235 bushels an acre in corn just to approach profitability.
“You’d have to be exceeding record average yields in everything,” he said.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, published its wrap-up of the 2024 growing season earlier this month, its pages replete with record numbers.
Corn
Overall, Arkansas growers planted about 7 million acres of crops in 2024, a decline of about 158,000 acres from the previous year. Corn acreage saw the most dramatic drop in the state, from 850,000 acres planted in 2023 to 500,000 acres planted in 2024. The average yield among those acres, however, tied the state record at 187 bushels an acre. Jason Kelley, extension wheat and feed grains agronomist for the Division of Agriculture, said the crop represented “personal bests” for many growers he spoke with.
“A lot of the growers I visited with felt like it was some of the best corn they’d grown,” Kelley said.
An average market price of $4.20 per bushel, however, marked a continued decline from 2022’s peak price of $6.54 per bushel, making the crop unprofitable for most Arkansas farmers.
“Growers are going through their budgets right now and probably looking for things they can cut out that won’t impact yield,” Kelley said.
Rice
Arkansas, the country’s No.1 rice-producing state, planted more than 1.44 million acres of the crop in 2024, all but 118,000 acres of it long-grain rice. Growers saw record average yields of 7,640 pounds per acre, producing more than 109 million hundredweight of rice. Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the Division of Agriculture, said that while growers managed significant yields despite harsh weather conditions, those same conditions reduced profitability in the end.
“It was the excellent production year we thought it would be,” Hardke said. “Everything pointed to being really close to 2021’s record yield.
“Unfortunately, the hitch for rice was the milling yield component,” he said. “It has a huge effect on the prices growers receive, and how much rice the industry actually has to work with.”
2024 saw widespread early planting from row crop farmers, with a significant portion of the crop in the ground before April 15. Periodic rains between mid-April and June made fertilizing the crop and effectively applying herbicides difficult. The summer then saw an extraordinary string of 100-degree-plus high temperatures, before finally being topped off with the effects of not one but two hurricanes rising from the Gulf of Mexico.
The result of the repeated wetting-and-drying cycles throughout the summer and early fall was reduced milling yields, which represent the amount of whole kernel grains from the overall crop.
“Nobody’s complaining about the yields, but we’re going to have some issues with market demands,” Hardke said. “Whole kernel rice is what has the greatest value. When the milling yields are low, it means our percentage of whole kernels after milling is lower.”
Cotton
Arkansas cotton acreage jumped more than 27 percent in 2024 to 650,000 acres, a growth rate consistent with the United States cotton industry as a whole. The state also saw a record average yield of 1,313 pounds per acre, for an overall production estimate of 1.75 million bales.
Zachary Treadway, extension cotton and peanut agronomist for the Division of Agriculture, said the high yields speak to the skill of the Arkansas cotton farmer.
“I think those numbers are really a compliment to our producers,” Treadway said. “They didn’t have the easiest of years: a very wet planting season, followed by endless weeks of hot, dry weather, broken by two hurricanes blowing in at the beginning of defoliation. Farming cotton is never easy, but this was a particularly difficult year. To have numbers like that, in a year like this, speaks to how well those growers can manage a crop.”
Nationally, the average estimated cotton yield fell about 7 percent, from 899 pounds per acre to 836.
Cotton prices remained low in 2024, falling from the 2023 average of 79 cents per pound to 76 cents.
“We’re seeing the same prices we were seeing in the 1970s,” Treadway said. “And input prices continue to rise. Even with the good yields, the margins are just super-thin this year.”
Peanuts
Peanut acreage saw the largest expansion of all Arkansas row crops in 2024 by an order of magnitude, from 35,000 acres in 2023 to 45,000 acres in 2024, according to USDA.
“When you think of Arkansas, you don’t think of peanuts right off the top of your head,” Treadway said. “Seeing the acreages jump in Arkansas, that’s exciting. We’ve got a great group of peanut growers in Arkansas, who are really knowledgeable. They’ve faced some hardships this year, too — the same weather hardships, and other things specific to peanuts.”
While the average Arkansas yield fell from 5,800 pounds per acre to 5,500 pounds, the added acreage brought overall production up considerably, to 242 million pounds. The average market price fell to $510 a ton in 2024 from $530 a ton the previous year.
Soybeans
Arkansas soybean growers saw record production of more than 166 million bushels, averaging 55 bushels per acre across more than 3 million acres. Ross said that beating the previous record, set in 2023, was astonishing, given the wildly different weather scenarios.
“Everyone did really well in 2023,” he said, “when we had almost ideal weather conditions for soybeans. 2024 was a different story altogether.”
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.
