“There is some ground that is so flat and so low-lying that it stays so wet so much of the year, it’s not really conducive to anything other than rice, which will tolerate those conditions,” he explained. Only about 10 percent of the acreage stays in rice all the time. In Arkansas, most farmers grow rice in rotation with other commodity crops, primarily soybeans and then some corn, cotton, and other grains like sorghum. In California, planes drop seeds into flood fields, and in Hardke’s region, farmers typically “drill” seeds into dry fields and then flood them after the plants have germinated. Hardke said in Asian countries, seedlings are often planted into flooded fields. Typically, the plants are densely seeded in fields that are kept flooded throughout the entire growing season.
And while vast expanses separate that growing region from California and especially Asia and there are nuances within systems, in terms of how most large-scale commercial farmers are growing the crop around the world, “When you boil it down, it’s very similar,” he said. He said that Arkansas and surrounding states are particularly suited for farming the crop thanks to the lowland landscape, soils that are conducive to holding water, and the right climate. Jarrod Hardke grew up on a rice farm, grows rice, and is a rice extension agronomist at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. In 2020, about 3 million acres of rice were harvested. Rice production in the US barely registers in comparison, but it is still primarily grown at a large scale on commodity farms in a cluster of states in the mid-South and on the Gulf Coast - Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas - and in California.
The vast majority of the world’s rice is grown in Asia, with China and India vastly outproducing all other countries. Whether rice is part of your most treasured family traditions or is simply one of the staples you keep on hand for easy weeknight meals, here’s what you need to know about where and how it’s grown and its environmental impacts. “From enslaved people from West Africa, to Vietnamese and Kurdish refugees, to Canary Islanders and Italians, those who brought rice dishes from their homelands with them to the South also embodied narratives laden with struggle and survival, migration, movement, and family tradition.” At the same time, rice is absolutely a global food,” culinary historian Michael Twitty explains in his 2020 cookbook, Rice. “For many of us Southerners, no other ingredient tastes this much like home.
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