The harvest is underway in Arkansas and several crops including rice, corn and soybeans are well ahead of crop collection averages through mid-September. The early harvest numbers have been fueled by dry and hot weather in the Arkansas Delta during the last month. “Rice harvest took off last week in the heat wave,” said Scott Stiles, extension economics program associate for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “We’re amazingly a long way into rice harvest barely halfway through September,” said Jarrod Hardke, extension rice agronomist for the Division of Agriculture. “We’ll continue to watch this unfold as soybean basis may weaken as we get further into harvest,” Stiles said.