Recent flooding in southern and eastern Arkansas has displaced turtles from their normal habitat in the canals, swamps and low-lying areas near the rice fields, and driven them to seek shelter in the ditches next to the crops.
Now because they are so close to the rice paddies, the reptiles are damaging plants already left fragile from flooding and drought in parts of southeastern Arkansas, researchers said.
"This is very rare," said Ralph Mazzanti, an agricultural extension rice-research coordinator for the University of Arkansas. "So far, we have seen it in one county, but over about 300 acres and in several rice fields."
Turtles have damaged about 10 percent of Mazzanti's research rice field, and he said that could increase.
Now I wasn't aware that Arkansas even had rice paddies, but it turns out some half of the country's entire rice production comes from this area, and the turtles are damaging an already crippled crop output, weakened by flooding in some parts of the state and drought in others. The US is a big rice exporter and the further damage to rice crops here will only push world rice prices up.
It's not a good thing for a world already on edge on food prices.
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