Richards named Rice Festival Farmers of the Year

Crowley - The 86th International Rice Festival has selected Christian and Julie Richard as the 2023 Farmers of the Year.
The Richards will join the Presidential Party for the 2023 festivities. The annual event is the oldest and largest agricultural festival in Louisiana.
This year’s festival will be held Oct. 19 to 22 in downtown Crowley.
Julie and Christian Richard are a farming couple from Kaplan who own and operate Richard Farms. They have three children — Katherine who is 12, Saul who is 10, and Landry who is 8.
They are each the sixth generation of their families to farm and manage 5,600 acres of rice, crawfish, and soybeans.
Julie and Christian are both leaders, innovators, hard workers, and extremely progressive rice farmers. Both make decisions that will be most effective for the business as well as utilize technology, conservation programs, and practices to bring their crops to harvest in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Richard Farms has excelled in sustainability. Christian was selected as a Field-to-Market Farmer Spotlight Honoree. This recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to agriculture sustainability efforts.
He has been on the USA Rice Federation Sustainability Committee for several years and has always had close ties to conservation.
In early 2016, Christian chaired one of the four committees to help develop a sustainability strategy for the U.S. rice industry. He quickly realized that through their involvement in the Louisiana Master Farmer Program and development of an RMS (resource management system) plan that although they were already addressing all of the resource concerns on their farm, they did not really have a way to quantify them to allow the end user and consumer to have a tangible number to gauge the degree of sustainability on their particular farm.
Realizing that rice is a very special crop in the number of resources that it utilizes throughout the growing season and beyond, Julie and Christian have enrolled their farm in numerous NRCS programs to help protect the natural resources in their farming operation.
They have precision leveled 95% of the production land and have installed underground irrigation and grade stabilization structures and have seen a significant reduction in water use while the field yields have shown continuous improvement.
In addition, they also flood fields during the winter to provide valuable wildlife habitat.
Since water is a valuable resource in their day-to-day operation, Julie and Christian have created a tailwater recovery system to facilitate the reuse of precious water resources. This system allows them to recycle water that comes off their fields as well as neighboring fields, pump it into the reservoir, and hold it until it is needed for irrigation.
Richard Farms understands the importance of agriculture policy and Julie has assisted in policy implementation and provided guidance for disaster recovery programs throughout the state through the Farm Service Agency. Julie currently serves as the Chair of the Louisiana Farm Service Advisory Committee.
Their operation has an excellent on-farm grain drying and storage facility that will handle 75% of the initial harvest and maximize grain quality, while being the most efficient in doing so.
They were the Louisiana pilot site for a remote grain drying monitoring system that is utilized at their facility.
Richard Farms believes in research and innovation and has hosted LSU research plots and the annual Horizon Rice Field Day for many years. Their farm has also served as the John Deere Project Engineering Center Louisiana Test site for over 20 years.
Both Julie and Christian have served on numerous agriculture related committees at the local, state and national levels and have received numerous awards and recognitions indicative of their accomplishments.
They were jointly named the 2009 National Outstanding Young Farmer Award Winners, both are LSU AgCenter Certified Master Farmers, Christian is an alumnus of the USA Rice Leadership Development Program, and Julie is a member of the current class.
Julie has been selected to receive the American Council on Germany McCloy Fellowship for Agriculture, LSU Agriculture Outstanding Alumnus, was a 2022 Louisiana Girl Scout Woman of Distinction recipient, was selected to receive a membership in Gamma Sigma Delta Agriculture Honor Society, past president of Beta Sigma Phi Service Sorority, a member of Chez Elle Women’s Club, and the current president of the LSU College of Agriculture Alumni Association.
Christian is past president both the Vermilion and Louisiana Rice Growers Associations, served as vice-chair of the LA Rice Promotion Board, Vermilion Rotary Club Farmer of the Year, Cotton Rice Con-Till Conference Rice Farmer of the Year, USA Rice Outlook Conference Farmer of the Year, and the U.S. Field-to-Market Farmer Spotlight Honoree.
Julie and Christian are both very excited to be recognized as the 2023 International Rice Festival Farmers of the Year.