Executive Summary

An increase in the number of reported cases of damage caused by Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks has raised concerns about the potential economic impact of these ducks on the rice industry in Southwest Louisiana. The rice industry in Southwest Louisiana has a farm gate value of nearly $327 million annually making it the top ranked agricultural industry in the region. On a state level, the rice industry generates more than $560 million annually. Given the importance of the rice industry to the state, and more critically, the regional economy and the growing numbers and incidence of these ducks, there is a need for examining potential options for mitigating the impacts beings felt by the rice industry.

To this point, however, much of the evidence of damage caused by the Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks has been anecdotal and does not convey a comprehensive view of the exact nature and magnitude of the issue. As a result, personnel with the LSU AgCenter developed and disseminated a survey to rice producers in two separate efforts, once in the summer and fall of 2023 and another in the spring and winter of 2024. Those efforts resulted in 46 completed surveys. Highlights of the results from the survey are:

• Impacts were reported by producers in 10 parishes indicating that the issue is not limited to coastal parishes
• Nearly 75 percent of the producers indicated they had experienced negative impacts from the ducks
• Over 76 percent of the producers indicated that these ducks are causing negative impacts in their operations annually
• At planting through establishment of the permanent flood was reported as the periods when the ducks are causing the most impacts by nearly 90 percent of the producers. The time at or around flooding the ratoon crop was identified as the period in which the ducks were causing the most impacts by nearly 11 percent of the producers
• Increased costs associated with having to replant acres, increased costs associated with activities taken to reduce the impact of the ducks, and reduced revenue from yield losses were all equally as likely to be experienced by producers.
• Damage caused by these ducks was limited within producers’ operations with roughly 8 percent of the acres having to be replanted, roughly 18 percent experiencing yield losses, and roughly 37 percent having additional costs associated with mitigation actions taken to attempt to minimize the impacts from the ducks.
• On impacted acres, average yield losses reported by producers was roughly 13 percent while average mitigation costs were roughly $42 per acre.
• The total estimated economic impact (increased costs and/or reduced revenue) associated with the Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks averaged $49 per acre across all rice acres reported in the producer’s operation.

It should be noted that care should be taken in making definitive statements regarding the scope and significance of this issue given the low number of responses.However, despite the implication that the impacts being caused by Black-bellied Whistling ducks are, even for an individual farm operation, relatively localized, the estimate of the per acre economic impact across all rice acres is still significant. In a time when profit margins continue to shrink with rising input costs and softening rice prices, any additional costs and/or reductions in revenue puts even more pressure on profit margins.

Despite the limitations of this survey, there seems to be ample evidence that this is not an insignificant issue and, if left unchecked, has the potential of becoming excessively challenging for rice farmers. As such, additional efforts are likely warranted to study this issue and examine potential short term and long solutions.

See PDF for complete details regarding this survey.