Robert Moery is picking me up at the corner of Capitol and Scott in downtown Little Rock, and I know immediately which pickup belongs to him. That's because it has a front license plate that says "RICE."
Moery managed the re-election campaign of Gov. Asa Hutchinson last year, then founded public policy consulting firm Broadview Strategies. Later in the day, I'll ride on the firm's namesake--Broadview Road--which leads to the Lonoke County farm near Carlisle that has been in the Moery family since 1909. His grandfather, "Sonny" Moery, and his father, Kyle Moery, still grow rice on that land along with soybeans and corn. Even though Robert isn't working at the farm on a daily basis, his clients include Riceland Foods of Stuttgart.
The rice culture runs deep on the Grand Prairie. While Arkansans in urban areas associate rice cultivation with Stuttgart, the first Arkansas rice to be grown commercially was a bit to the north near Carlisle. Robert drives me by the spot where William H. Fuller cultivated that first true commercial crop. A wooden sign at Morris Farm tells the area's history. And, yes, rice is still grown there.
"Fuller, who had come to Arkansas from Nebraska to farm, was on a hunting trip with friends in Louisiana in 1896 when he first saw rice being cultivated," Steve Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "Noting the similarities between the Louisiana soil conditions and those of the Grand Prairie, he resolved to experiment with rice on his own land. Investing $400 in pumps and other equipment, Fuller planted three acres with rice in 1897. Not encouraged by his initial results, Fuller moved to Louisiana and worked on rice farms there for several years, learning the techniques that had proven successful.
"Returning to Arkansas in 1903, Fuller met with several businessmen in Hazen, who offered to pay him $1,000 if he could raise 35 bushels of rice per acre on his farm in either 1904 or 1905. Purchasing a well rig and other material in Louisiana as well as seed rice, Fuller planted 70 acres with rice in 1904 and produced a crop of 5,225 bushels, more than double the output required to claim the $1,000 bonus. His example, coupled with other successful plantings, prompted a growing number of Arkansas farmers to begin cultivating rice."
Others had experimented with the crop far earlier.
"Thomas Nuttall reported seeing rice cultivated at Arkansas Post in 1819," Teske writes. "Later, around 1840, some farmers in Arkansas experimented with rice, but they found that maintaining proper growing conditions for the grain was difficult. Rice grows best in flooded fields, but it's easier to plant and harvest when the ground is dry. Technology in the 19th century didn't offer affordable solutions to the problem of irrigating fields on the schedule that a rice crop requires."
Now, Arkansas grows almost half the nation's rice. Rice cultivation isn't confined to the Grand Prairie. It's grown in most counties in the eastern half of the state, and in the river bottoms of several counties in the western half. Weiner in northeast Arkansas has hosted the Arkansas Rice Festival since 1976. Rice was included in the design of the Arkansas State Quarter, which was released in 2003. The Legislature made rice the official state grain in 2007.
Irrigation remains the key to Arkansas' leadership in rice farming.
"Morris Farm sits atop the severely overdrafted Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer," Vicky Boyd wrote last year for RiceFarming.com. "In the 1980s, Richard [Morris] wanted to reduce reliance on groundwater and built a 60-acre reservoir with a 600-acre-foot capacity. The family added an additional 20-acre water-storage structure a few years ago. In addition to rice, the Morrises grow corn and soybeans, which are irrigated with the same surface systems. They do have deep wells as backup, but Richard prefers not to turn them on because of the substantial cost and to preserve the aquifer."
The other half of the rice grown in the United States comes mostly from Texas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri. In an average year, about 1.3 million acres are planted in rice, with more than 200 million bushels harvested on almost 2,700 farms. Despite what you read about corporate agriculture, 95 percent of the rice farms in Arkansas are family-owned operations such as the Moery and Morris farms.
The lowering of the aquifer has been an issue for almost a century.
"Likely by 1916, farmers were pumping out more water than could be replaced by natural processes to irrigate 100,000 acres of rice," writes Arkansas historian Guy Lancaster. "In the 1920s, the lowering of the aquifer's level had become obvious, and the U.S. Geological Survey, at the urging of U.S. Sen. Thaddeus Caraway, investigated the matter and published its findings in 1931. It linked the depletion of groundwater to rice irrigation. Some farmers turned to pumping water from the Sparta Sands Aquifer, which lies below the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer.
"Federal incentives for agriculture during World War II only increased rice cultivation. With the Flood Control Act of 1950, Congress attempted to address some of the problems faced on the Grand Prairie by authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to supply farms with irrigation from the White River. However, the plan has proven controversial."
All these years later, the political and legal battles centered on the water needed for rice cultivation continue.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 08/24/2019