Bootheel farmers are enjoying a rice renaissance

NEW MADRID, Mo. -- Gary Branum putters about his fields in his pickup truck and sees beauty in the barren -- acre after flat acre, most of them muddy and much of it marshy. Patches of flooding here, an occasional tree there.

The sight brings joy to this rice farmer, whose Missouri's Bootheel region is enjoying a rice renaissance, challenging cotton as king in these parts.

While just a cluster of Southeast Missouri counties ranks the state sixth in U.S. rice production, the notion of such grain in middle America runs against common images about rice farming -- Asians in conical hats, plowing water buffalo through the steamy rice fields of Thailand.

"When you go to Jefferson City, they do a doubletake. They have no idea about Southeast Missouri and rice," grins Branum, 11 seasons of rice farming behind him after having tried milo, corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton.

"They think you're some kind of a weirdo if you grow rice in Missouri, but it doesn't hurt our feelings," adds Branum, who last year planted 2,200 acres -- 700 more than the year before. "They are coming around to see that this land has a purpose, and its purpose is most definitely rice."

At least 90 years

At the Mississippi Delta's northern fringe, farmers have grown the grain for at least 90 years. With another record yield under its belt, Missouri now trails just Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas in rice production.

Missouri's rice acreage, just 4,800 in 1970, grew to a record 207,000 last year, up 33,000 from 2000, according to the Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service. The state produced 1.2 billion pounds of rice, up 28 percent. The average yield per acre was 5,950 pounds, up 250 from 2000 and from 4,400 pounds in 1970.

"We're the only state increasing steadily in acreage," said Bruce Beck, an extension agronomist at Poplar Bluff.

Nationwide, rice production totaled 21.3 billion pounds, up 12 percent from 2000. The average per-acre yield of 6,429 pounds was the highest on record, 148 pounds above the previous year.

While Missouri's county-by-county figures aren't ready, officials don't expect much change from 2000, when Butler and Stoddard counties by far led in acres harvested and rice produced, trailed by New Madrid, Pemiscot, Dunklin and Ripley counties. There are an estimated 250 to 350 rice producers in the state.

So why the Bootheel? Farmers point to the land -- and what lies beneath.

Here in the state's most intensively cropped area, thick soil holds water above flat terrain, nurturing rice plants and their massive root systems. Underground tables are home to abundant, clean irrigation water used by farmers to swiftly swamp rice fields.

From the 1950s through 1973, Missouri's total allotted rice acreage varied from 3,000 to 6,000 before growing dramatically after 1974, when acreage allotments were eliminated. Rice acreage immediately rose from 5,000 to 14,000 acres around the Bootheel -- and it has ballooned since.

A backyard mill

Some tie much of the growth to the Louis Dreyfus Corp. rice mill opened in nearby Marston in 1988. Once forced to freight their harvest to Arkansas or beyond for processing -- "You couldn't justify that cost," Branum says -- area farmers now have the backyard mill to take in their rice, often in shipments coinciding with when growers could get the best price.

"Dreyfus has been a big plus to this area," Branum said.

With growing wetlands come waterfowl that farmers aren't inclined to shoo away. Ducks and geese, they say, nourish the fields with nitrogen-rich droppings, along the way consuming weed seeds and helping decompose rice stubble.

For sure, the livelihood can be a muddy mess for farmers like Branum, who doesn't mind. He has turned a bit aristocratic over the region's cotton and corn farmers, laughingly pointing out how they toil clearing muck from their machines.

It's a nice turnaround for Branum, who says cotton farmers tend to look down on rice growers, at times blaming the swampy paddies for breeding bugs.

"If you have a rice farm and have a neighbor that gets bit by a mosquito, it's your fault," he says. "They think we caused the mosquitos."

But, he says, "there's assurance. ... I can get up in the morning and know I don't need a rain that day. "