Rice Stewardship: How Farmers and Conservation Work Together (Ep 813)

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast.

I'm Dr. Jared Henson, and I'm gonna be your host today.

Uh, I'm excited about today's episode.

It's gonna be the first of, like, a three episode miniseries that we're gonna do focused on our ag programs.

We do a lot of work in the ag space now, uh, and I'm really excited 'cause as I introduce our guests today, I actually can introduce people who are agronomists and biological specialists that are specifically focused on ag practices, and that has not always been the case.

So I'm really excited about bringing that side of the story today.

And for our first episode in this, we're gonna jump into probably the ag practice that we've been most involved with for the longest, and that would be with our rice programs.

Uh, and so to do that, I have three great g- guests from all over the country.

That's the exciting part.

Um, I've got Misty Adams.

She's an agronomist from our southern region, uh, and she works out of our Jonesboro office in Arkansas.

Misty, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I have Kyle Soello.

He's a regional biologist for our southern region, also out f- uh, kind of out of our Gulf, Gulf Coast region.

And then I also have, uh, Regina Stafford.

She's a biological specialist out of our western region.

So Kyle and Regina, thank y'all for being here, too.

Thank you for having us.

So as we talk through this episode, like, one of the things that I'm most excited about is to kind of hear the differences between the programs, but then also the similarities.

And we've been in this rice space for a long time.

Uh, rice is a super important, uh, landscape for waterfowl, uh, especially on the wintering side of that.

But out west, I know Regina, it's also pretty important in some local waterfowl population.

Isn't that correct?

Mallards specifically really depend on it.