NH News - "Fifty Years In Rice And Still Going Strong"

MAY/JUNE 2003

Fifty Years In Rice And Still Going Strong

Article by Raylene Nickel
Photos by Mike Boyatt

Lavern Long has been growing rice in Arkansas for more than 50 years. At age 81, he still works his own 2,000 acres of cropland, growing 500 acres of rice each year. Along the way he has helped his son, Greg, and son-in-law, Billy Harris, establish their own rice-growing operations.

“Rice is a sure crop,” Long said. “If you water it and keep it clean, most years it’ll produce well. It’s not too vulnerable to disasters. Through all the years I’ve farmed, rice has usually brought a fair price. There’s been money in raising it.”

Though the price of rice is low right now, Long and his family expect the market to rebound. They have no plans to stop growing the crop that has played such an important role in the building of their farms.

Rice has a long history in the farming community of Tuckerman, Arkansas, that Long calls home. Farmers began growing the crop there in the early 1900s. Today, Arkansas produces more rice than any other state in the nation.

The 1950 Rice Crop

Long has been farming for more than 60 years. His father was also an Arkansas farmer, but he grew mostly cotton. Around 1950 Lavern Long got his first taste of growing rice while working for a neighbor. Virgin timber was still being cleared in northeastern Arkansas, and the newly cleared fields were being planted to rice. There were few weed seeds in the forest soil, so the first rice crops had little growing competition from unwanted plants.

Long seeded his first crop of rice on his own land in 1969. He now grows soybeans, milo, and winter wheat in addition to rice.

Billy Harris, married to Long’s daughter Cathy, was invited to help his father-in-law with farm work in 1978. It was an opportune moment for the young man who had spent his childhood on a farm and was anxious to get back into it. He had been working in a Little Rock factory since high school, “But I decided that sort of life just wasn’t my cup of tea,” he now recalls.

Besides working with his father-in-law, Harris rented 40 acres of land for himself and planted it to soybeans. He now farms 1,500 acres of rented farmland.

Working Partnership

Veteran rice grower Lavern Long of Tuckerman, Arkansas.

Harris, 46, continues to work with his father-in-law and his brother-in-law, Greg, in a partnering arrangement in which each one manages his own rented and deeded land while sharing labor and equipment with the other two. The shared arrangement saves each farmer quite a bit of expense for both equipment and hired labor.

“Using myself as an example,” Harris said, “if the three of us didn’t work together, I would have to hire one and sometimes two additional people.” As it is, he has just one employee.

It’s easy to imagine conflicts growing out of an arrangement in which three otherwise independent farmers share labor and equipment. Whose land is seeded or harvested first? But Harris said such conflicts have never happened. “The good Lord pretty well takes care of deciding whose fields will get seeded or harvested first,” he said. “It just depends on whose land is dry enough to work. That’s where we start.”

Rice Rotated With Beans

On his own land, Harris rotates rice with soybeans, usually alternating his crops on irrigated fields each year. Last year he grew 500 acres of rice. This year he will have only 180 acres of rice and grow soybeans on last year’s rice fields. The soybeans help break up the life cycle of red rice, a weed-like wild rice plant that is as disliked by rice growers as wild oats are by wheat farmers.

“Red rice has a pretty red kernel, and a rice crop will be discounted in price if there are too many red rice kernels in it,” Harris said. “Wild rice can take over a whole field of white rice.”

Harris likes to seed his rice in early April. Because a smooth seedbed is needed he disks fields that are rutted and levels the fields with a land plane, a long piece of equipment that blades the ground surface smooth. Using a New Holland Flexicoil air seeder, Harris plants the rice 3/4-inch deep. Immediately after seeding he applies a herbicide.

Flooded Fields

Before fields can be flooded, levees must be put in place. Harris engages a surveyor to mark the placement of the levees in the fields. These levees follow the contours of the field. He uses a seven-bladed dike plow to make the levees. A seeder mounts on the plow and reseeds rice on the tops of the levees. Floodgates are made from plastic tarping and placed at one end of the field.

After the rice grows to a height of 3 to 4 inches, Harris engages an aerial applicator to fly on nitrogen fertilizer. “Once a stand of rice gets established, it’s a pretty hardy crop,” he added.

Next, the fields are flooded to a depth that just barely covers the ground. Water is held on the crop throughout the summer. After the rice plants joint, preparing for the emergence of the head, Harris flies on more nitrogen. Two to three weeks before the crop is ready to harvest he opens the floodgates and the water drains off the fields.

Rice in this area is typically harvested in late August or early September, when it is direct combined. Yields run from 130 to 140 bushels per acre, dried. Harris stores his rice in bins on the farm before delivering it to a local grain elevator.

As harvested, rice kernels are tan in color and enclosed in a hull. Processing removes the hulls, after which the kernels are polished.

Both Greg Long, left, and Billy Harris work closely with Greg’s father to share equipment and labor.

Field Prep After Rice

Following harvesting comes the job of preparing the fields for soybean planting the following spring. Levees must be pulled down. For this Harris uses the dike plow again, only this time the blades are reversed.

The fields are then worked with a stubble roller, an implement 20 feet wide and resembling a heavy, large steel pipe. The roller presses the stubble into the earth where it can decay rapidly. If the fields are smooth come spring he uses the air seeder to plant soybeans directly into the decaying rice residue.

The price farmers receive for their rice crop has fallen sharply in recent years. The $1.72 a bushel Harris received for his crop in 2002 does not cover costs. Industry analysts estimate the average cost of inputs for a crop of rice is about $380 an acre. However, like wheat, rice is included in USDA’s farm program, which helps to compensate growers for the shortfall in income.

In spite of the ups and downs of the rice market, Harris and the Long family are optimistic about growing rice and about farming in general. “Better times are coming again for agriculture,” Harris said. “As it is, farming has been very good to me, and I feel fortunate that my father-in-law helped me get started in the business.”

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