As floodwaters recede, Arkansas soybean planting moves ahead

LITTLE ROCK — As flood waters have receded over the past three weeks, Arkansas growers have made successful inroads toward timely planting of soybeans and other crops.
Major storm systems and flooding across Arkansas in early April left the 2025 planting season an open question for many in the agricultural industry. With an estimated $78.9 million in crop losses, growers were faced with the likely total loss of wheat, as well as any early-planted corn or soybeans.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 45 percent of the state’s planned 3 million soybean acres had been planted as of April 27, putting growers well ahead of the five-year average of 31 percent planted for this point in the season.
Jeremy Ross, extension soybean agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said most of the state’s soybean acreage will likely recover from April’s damage.
“When you get away from the flooding closer to major rivers, farmers are planting fields that are dry,” Ross said April 28. “There was quite a bit of field activity last week in some areas, but some received rain last weekend and more today.”

In 2024, harvest for many Arkansas crops, from corn to soybeans to rice, came to fruition in a tight time window, causing bottlenecks at buying points, sometimes overwhelming barge and storage capacity. Ross said the timing of the 2025 harvest is likely to be more dispersed.
“This is going to be one of those years where we will have gaps in the planting, which is not a bad thing when it comes to spreading out the harvest,” he said. “I was still walking fields the first of this week assessing plant stands, and we are keeping a majority of the planted fields I’ve walked. Some spot planting and lower ends of fields, where water stood for several days, will need to be replanted.”
In its April 28 Crop Progress report for Arkansas, the National Agricultural Statistics Service said farmers had 45 percent of their soybeans planted, with 24 percent emerged.
Arkansas corn was 80 percent planted and 58 percent emerged, while cotton was 6 percent planted and 1 percent emerged. Rice was 68 percent planted and 40 percent emerged. Peanuts were 5 percent planted, according to NASS.