NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. Department of Agriculture says Louisiana’s harvests this year include record yields for at least five crops - corn, soybeans, cotton, grain sorghum and rice. Sugar cane is still being harvested and could be near a record.
Economist Kurt Guidry says reasons include more irrigation, better crop varieties and luck with the weather.
Rice expert John Saichuk cautions that a rice disease called blast may have cut the harvest below the federal estimate of 6,500 pounds per acre.
And Louisiana State University AgCenter surveys put the record yield at last year’s 6,717 pounds per acre.
Federal estimates for other Louisiana record yields are 170 acres a bushel for corn, 44 bushels per acre for soybeans, 1,025 pounds of cotton per acre, and 100 bushels an acre for grain sorghum.
- The Associated PressUnion’s District 6: AT&T deal reached
District 6 of the Communications Workers of America has reached a tentative agreement with AT&T Southwest, the union said in a statement.
District 6 covers about 22,000 union members at AT&T’s operations in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.
Details of the tentative agreement were not made available publicly in the union statement late Friday afternoon.
A ratification vote by the membership will be scheduled.
Separate negotiations are continuing with AT&T West and with AT&T East.
Union members at AT&T Midwest, AT&T Legacy and AT&T Southeast already have ratified new contracts.
- David smithShort session sees Arkansas Index dip
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, dropped 0.47 to 247.94 Monday.
“Stocks fell in this abbreviated pre-holiday session as investors acknowledged the unlikely prospect that a tax and spending compromise will be reached before yearend,” said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc. in Little Rock.
USA Truck fell by more than 6 percent, while Tyson Foods rose by less than 1 percent.
Arkansas firms with the highest volume in the shortened trading day were Wal-Mart, with 2.9 million shares traded; and Little Rock-based Windstream, which had 2.3 million shares traded.
Index volume was 7.9 million shares; the average is 28.5 million.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business, Pages 25 on 12/25/2012