Article September 4, 1902 Issue

The New Rice-farming in the South

Day Allen Willey

Review of Reviews

THE story of the "rice belt," which extends four hundred miles through southern and central Louisiana and south eastern Texas, from the banks of the Mississippi to beyond the Brazos River, varying in width from twenty to fifty miles, is not unlike the story of wheat-growing Kansas. Here also is the prairie, with its scrubby vegetation which pastured the few herds of cattle and ponies owned by the natives, who little realized its possibilities. In fact, the great natural reservoir which lies beneath was only discovered by accident, after the pioneer Western settlers, by some freak of fortune, had ventured into the country, determined to discover what elements of wealth lay beneath the sod. Just as clusters of cabins in Kansas and Nebraska have become towns and cities, and tract after tract of range land has been converted into an inland sea of waving grain by the tide of humanity flowing out upon the plains from the East, so this Southern soil has been taken up and is being changed from one of the great waste places of the continent into a center of productiveness.

Since the pioneers in this movement located in the belt eighteen years age, 350,000 acres have been reclaimed for rice culture, and 50,000 acres yearly are being added, —not extensive when contrasted with the wheat and corn fields, but representing, acre for acre, far greater outlay in money and effort, for every square foot must be irrigated during the growing season, necessitating a network of canals aggregating fully twelve hundred miles, to say nothing of the labor involved in walling the fields to hold the water, all of which the wheat or corn planter avoids. To go further into statistics, the thirty thousand rice growers have invested $20,000,000, represented by their lands, canals, and machinery; yet their operations have been confined to a few corners of the land believed to be productive. The statistician has estimated that four million acres have a natural supply of water to be obtained by piercing the earth's crust to the reservoir beneath, or from the streams intersecting the country. The area under cultivation already yields two million barrels, requiring ten thousand cars to transport it to market. It supplies twothirds of the quantity consumed in the United States.

Modern ideas and systematic methods attend the culture of the grain from seedtime until it leaves the field to be sorted and prepared for the market. The grower may till fifty or five thousand acres, but about each tract the bank of earth is carefully thrown up by the ditching plough, frequently "tamped" on the inside with spade and shovel to prevent leakage. The horse drill and cultivator can be used in seeding, while furrows are turned as in an ordinary field intended for wheat or oats. Water flows upon the shoots when a few inches out of ground, and until harvest time in early autumn, the country is turned into a series of lakes, for the plant roots must be continuously submerged, three, or perhaps four months, to a depth of two or three inches. Every acre is a great sponge absorbing fourteen to fifteen thousand gallons every twenty-four hours, yet when the grain nears maturity, and the water is drained from it, evaporation is so rapid that the farming machines can pass over the fields without difficulty in a few days. Then the scene is strikingly typical of harvest time in Kansas or the Dakotas. No less than five thousand harvesters, actually doing the work of two hundred thousand men, sweep through the mile after mile of golden stalks, for by a few alterations the mechanism which cuts and binds the sheaves of wheat ready for the stack without human aid, has come to the assistance of the rice growers. The steam thresher following, converts the chaff and straw into mammoth stacks, pouring the white kernels into a hundred bags in a day.

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