This Sunday February 5th the rice harvest of the 2022/23 harvest beganreported to The Observer the president of the Rice Growers Association (ACA), Alfredo Lago. As it happened in the last campaign, the threshing floor was inaugurated in Mones Quintela, in Artigas, on Karol Pinczak’s farm.
As is the tradition in the family, the Pinczaks began their harvest on a Sunday so that the trucks would arrive at the mill first thing Monday morning.
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Good yields are expected, similar to those of last season.
For this harvest they planted 1,420 hectares and the threshing “looks good”commented the producer to The Observer. He still does not have an estimate of the average yield that he will obtain when the harvest is finished, but he expects it to be similar to that of the last harvest (9,500 kilos per hectare), “or a little higher.”
Nationwide, 160,000 hectares of rice were plantedaccording to ACA estimates, and there is still no performance forecast, assured the president of the union.
In this campaign, given the scenario of accumulated water deficit, one difficulty that the rice growers faced was a 20% increase in water consumption.
“It’s very complicated. Water consumption this year was impressive. Due to evaporation, the water from the dams goes down on its own, without one opening the gates. We are taking care of every last drop,” Pinczak said, and said that in some fields The situation is so complicated that “intermittent irrigation” is being carried out, that is, two or three days are irrigated and the dams are closed. That can affect the quality of the crop, he warned.
This crop is 100% irrigated (from dams or water channels, such as lagoons or rivers) and due to the drought, irrigation planning was a cause for concern. For every hectare planted, 12 million liters of water are used.
In the Pinczak farm, most of the irrigation is done with water from the Uruguay River.
The lack of water “in terms of yield is going to be noticeable in this area. I don’t really know if someone could lose some area, but several producers have told me ‘we don’t know what to do, if we continue, if we abandon a part’, but we are always hoping that it rains,” he said.
Good quality
Although at the beginning the cold of October and September affected it, the crop was implanted well and in terms of health it had no problems.
The producer from Artiguán expects the quality of the rice to be good, even better than what was achieved in the 2021/22 campaign, in which there were high temperatures (“40° heat strokes,” he said), but some showers. The thermal shock caused a lot of broken rice to appear on the first threshing floors, but this year that is not expected to happen, because “it never rained.”
The last harvest closed with a planting of 163,800 hectares and a production of 1.5 million tons. In total, 9,230 kilos per hectare were produced, 184 bags of rice, according to ACA data.
The union reported that it was the highest production in the last decade, the planting area was recovered and the yield averages were above those of the last 10 years. In addition, jobs increased throughout the chain.
Courtesy Karol Pinczak
In the Pinczak family field, 1,420 hectares were planted this harvest.
In Uruguay and Paraguay
There, more than half of the threshing has already been done and the quality “is very good.” Unlike in Uruguay, temperatures above 40° and rain “almost always” are frequent, so thermal shock (which affects grain quality) is more common.
In this harvest, it is seen between 59 and 60% whole, the producer detailed, a percentage “similar to that of Uruguay”, in addition, “it is very good in white,” he added.
Yields are similar to those of last season, in which 9,000 kilos were produced per hectare, he reported.
