VIDALIA — It’s not going to be a bumper crop, but as long as the area gets the rain it needs, Concordia Parish Extension Service Director Glen Daniels said he believes the parish will have a good harvest this fall.

“We are going to have a lot of late beans this year, beans that were planted in June, so it is critical we get a rainfall in June or July,” Daniels said.

Soybeans were planted in two waves this year, one in late March and the other in early June.

The March beans were threatened early on by a long dry spell, but recent rains saved the plants from withering in the ground, Daniels said.

“The rains we got in the last of May and into June are really turning this crop around,” he said. “It has really made a rebound after this last rain.”

Beans were the most-planted crop in the parish this year, taking up between 75,000 and 80,000 acres, Daniels said.

Another crop that a good, solid rain could make or break is corn.

Though acreage is down from the frenzied planting that followed sky-high corn prices fueled by ethanol incentives of a few years ago, corn still makes up approximately 25,000 acres of the parish’s production farming.

“I have noticed some corn that the diameter of the corn is much smaller than it usually is,” Daniels said.

“We could use a good universal rain, and that would help tremendously.”

Fewer than 20,000 acres of cotton will be planted this year, but Daniels said another crop has come in force — rice.

Rice is being planted more because prices are good, but he said because more rice is being planted at a time when other crops are in the field, producers will have to watch to make sure Roundup from other crops doesn’t end up in the rice.

“When you’ve got two crops planted this close together, it’s inevitable that there will be some runoff onto one of them,” he said.

Between 20,000 and 21,000 acres of rice should be planted in the parish this year.

“It may be one of the all-time highs for acreage of rice this year,” he said.