Rice

We never know where the ideas for these newsletters will originate. This newsletter began in the Wimberley H-E-B on aisle 2 in front of the rice section as we both scoured the bags and boxes for Riceland’s Jazmine rice grown in Arkansas. That’s when we noted again how many different rice varieties the store is carrying and from how many different states and countries. Rice is one of our most ancient foods and has been under continuous development for centuries and by many of the worlds people. It became an interesting trail to follow.

Figure 1 Some of the varieties available.

Genetic evidence has shown that domesticated Asian rice Oryza sativa originated in the Pearl River valley in Southern China between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago. From there it spread to southeastern and south Asia, and westward across India. By 1000 B.C. it reached the Middle East and then the Moslem conquerors brought rice to Spain in the 8^th century and to Sicily in the 10^th. In Asia this cereal grain is the most widely consumed staple today and it feeds half the world’s population. Because of corn’s diversification into additions to food, corn oil production, ethanol production, etc. rice as food has risen in importance, especially for its calorific value. There are now over 40,000 varieties of domesticated rice, plus wild rice.

Figure 2 Asian rice Oryza sativa

The second major rice species Oryza glaberrima dates from about 3,500 years ago in the Niger River delta on the coast of West Africa. It was an important crop in this area but never spread extensively from its origin.

Figure 3 African rice Oryza glabirrima

However, the skills of its African growers were instrumental to the success of growing rice in the new world. More about their contributions and those of Japanese immigrants later.
Having been familiar with pictures of rice being grown in paddies and irrigated fields, we found it interesting to learn that rice can be grown in any normal field. But since it can germinate and grow under water, paddy fields reduce the labor to grow it. Weeds cannot grow in the water and insects and animals are unable to eat the tender shoots. While the domesticated form of rice continued to make its way toward the New World, four species of wild rice forming the genus Zizania palustris were being harvested in China and the North American regions of Maine, the Great Lakes, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wild rice gathering is still a part of the culture of the Native Americans and forms a large part of their caloric intake. It has also become a delicacy in the U.S. with the tribes selling their excess grain on the Internet. In China, the focus has moved from the grain to the plant’s stem which they eat as a vegetable.[1]

Figure 4 Manchurian Wildrice

Above are the unpeeled and peeled swollen, crisp stems of the wildrice grown by the Chinese and used as a vegetable. The stems swell because they are infected with the smut fungus Ustilago esculenta which prevents the plant from flowering. It must be harvested after the stem begins to swell, but before the infection reaches its reproductive stage, when the stem turns black and begins to disintegrate into fungal spores. Known as coba in China and water bamboo in English, its importation to the U.S. is prohibited in order to protect the North American species from the smut fungus.
Arthur Haines in Maine’s Kennebec Region has made a very interesting YouTube video titled Wild rice Harvest and Preparation. It begins as he and his partner are harvesting wild rice in a canoe. And while he slowly poles the boat through the rice, she plies two rice knockers (rounded sticks). Working rhythmically with a whip-knocking motion creating a swishing sound, she gathers some rice stalks over the boat and passes the other stick over the grains knocking them into the bottom of the canoe. They continue down a narrow water trail until they have enough rice grains to process for their needs. As a measure, one hundred pounds of collected grain will produce around 45 pounds of finished rice. The next step is to sun-dry the rice for 3 days. Then the grain is dumped into a 24” x 24” metal parching tray which is placed on a wood-fired outdoor grill. The rice is stirred and parched until the outer layer begins to crack. After the grains are cooled, Arthur pours them into a large bucket lined with animal hide and proceeds to stomp on them with his deer-hide moccasins. He then winnows the result and is left with beautiful black long grain wild rice.

Figure 5 Wild rice produced in the traditional manner.

This traditional, personal processing is very similar to that used by early indigenous people according to archaeological evidence left behind at their seasonal ricing camps.[2] Clay linings have been found in thermal parching pits and animal hides were discovered in ground depressions where they stomped on the rice to thresh it. Accounts of explorers, fur traders and government agents from the early 1600s to the late 1800s extolled the benefits of rice as a food, its storage qualities and ease of preparation. Check the Internet for wild rice harvested, processed and sold by native tribes in the Great Lakes Region.
The folklore of the Anishinable people (Chippewa, Ojibwa and Ojibwe of today) relates that they were once part of a larger Algonquin group that left eastern North America on a centuries long migration west along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. It details a vision to follow a great clam shell in the sky to a place where the food grows on the water. This journey ended between the late 1400s and early 1600s in the Lake Superior wild rice country when they encountered the plant. (Warren 1885)
California wild rice is grown commercially on 20,000 acres and is planted in cultivated paddies. It is a minor crop; however California is the largest producer of cultivated wild rice in the world. Trader Joes carries 100% California-grown wild rice on the Internet, but most wild rice in the grocery stores is sold as a blend such as Lundberg Wildblend Rice which consists of 5 different grains.
Exact nutritional components will vary depending on the manufacturer so be sure to read the food label on any rice you buy.

Figure 6 Lundberg Wild blend Rice

Left to right they are: Wild Rice, Black Rice, Wehani Red Rice, Long Grain Brown Rice and Sweet Brown Rice.
The first successful planting of Asian rice in the colonies was in 1685 in Charleston, South Carolina. And rice cultivation was well established in the Carolinas by the 1690s.[3] Not knowing anything about the cultivation and processing of rice, the American colonists depended on slaves imported from the rice growing regions of West Africa. By 1700, these experienced and skillful slaves were planting, irrigating, harvesting, drying, winnowing and milling rice on plantations in the South. By 1750 rice cultivation had become a very important American business especially in South Carolina and Georgia. This lasted for 100 years until the end of the Civil War. Caused by several factors; the end of slavery, devastating hurricanes and overworked and depleted soil, the rice industry in those states was dead by 1900.
However, at the same time , growing rice commercially became important elsewhere. Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas and later Northern California and Mississippi took their places and remain America’s rice growing regions today.

Figure 7 1909 Hauling Rice in South Texas. 

The first documented record of rice in Texas is from the Austin Colony settlement in the northernmost Mexican province, Coahuila y Tejas in 1828. And in 1836 Stephen F. Austin’s cousin Mary Austin Holley wrote that, “Rice is already produced in considerable quantities…”
This early rice farming was a primitive business. Small plots were cultivated with plow animals, seed was planted by hand, the rice was cut with sickles, winnowed in baskets and milled by heavy mortar and pestle. And it was known as Providence Rice as it relied on Providence for rain. Irrigated rice production entered the picture by the 1850s in the southeast part of the state on plantations worked by slaves until after the end of the Civil War. In the 1880s many factors worked together to ensure its success: wells were introduced, canal systems, irrigation pumps, milling machinery and the expansion of railroads that facilitated marketing. Wheat and oat mid-westerner farmers and investors were attracted by the cheap land prices of suitable rice land in Texas, and their mechanized equipment worked as well on rice as it had on wheat. By 1900, Texas and Louisiana together produced 99% of the commercial rice in the U.S. Immigration was encouraged, the immigrants came and the rice fields flourished. Texas A & M University and the USDA jointly established the Beaumont Cooperative Rice Experiment Station, which remains to this day one of the premier rice research facilities in the world. By 1915 there were big rice mills in Port Arthur, Beaumont, Orange and Houston. The rice was sent locally by railroad and was shipped out from Houston and Galveston to national and global markets.

Figure 8 Japanese rice growers in Texas.

The above picture shows a Japanese rice farm near Houston in the early 1900s. These immigrants started about 30 large-scale farms to grow rice on the coastal plains around Beaumont and Houston. Looking for opportunities for Japanese to settle in the United States, the Japanese Consul in New York City successfully campaigned for Japanese investors to look at the Texas rice industry as a good money-making enterprise. These gentlemen were well educated and had careers in business, law, politics and the military as officers. They purchased acreage and machinery and brought with them their families and the families of rice farmers who knew how to grow the crop. Two of the well-known Japanese communities were the Saibara settlement in Webster just outside of Houston and the Kishi Colony near Beaumont. Seito Saibara’s descendants continued rice farming into the 1970s. Kichimatsu Kishi and his farmers did well and the rice prospered until 1912 when saltwater contaminated their irrigation source. They then switched to vegetables, fruit and cattle and continued farming until the 1930s.
Japanese rice farmers and Texas rice farmers, in general, did well until the rice market collapsed in 1929 as the Great Depression began. But even before this economic upheaval, the world was affected by Japan’s conflict with the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War. With these events, discrimination against Japanese had begun especially in California. In 1921 the Alien Law that banned foreign immigrants from buying any more land was passed in Texas. The U.S. Congress followed this up in 1924 with legislation that closed further Japanese immigration. Western opinion solidified against the Japanese as they invaded and conquered Manchuria in 1931, a second Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937 and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 catapulting the U.S. into WW II.
Only a few of the Japanese rice farms lasted to the end of the 1970s, the rest became truck farms or were sold off. None are left now, but descendants of the early settlers can still be found in urban areas of the Gulf Coast. And several organizations have worked to document and preserve the histories of early Japanese Texans who made such important contributions to the rice industry.
Entering WW II our country needed to find ways to feed the U.S. military. A perfect food had been invented in the 1930s, it just needed to be produced in quantity. Erich Huzenlaub, a German biochemist invented a way to improve the shelf life and nutritional value of common white rice. Unhulled, cleaned rice is added to a vacuum tank that sucks the air from the grains. Then, hot water containing water-soluble B vitamins is forced into the grains at high pressure and steam seals the grain. After drying, the husks are milled from the rice leaving smooth, hardened kernels that insects cannot penetrate and sealed nutrients that cannot be rinsed away. The surface starch, however, is rinsed away to leave easily separated grains after cooking. Thus, Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice was born in 1942 by three key people: the inventor (Huzenlaub), the manufacturer (Forrest Mars of the candy company) and the food promoter (Gordon Harwell ).

Figure 9 The first Uncle Ben's Rice plant in Houston, TX. 1944

The U.S. Military bought all the rice the company could produce and helped pay for a bigger facility that would process 25 to 30 million pounds of rice a year for the US Army.
Once the war was over, the three gentlemen had to come up with a plan to peddle their product to the general public. Long before the war Harwell had brokered a small-scale product called Uncle Ben’s Plantation Rice. Supposedly, Uncle Ben, had been an African American of award-winning rice growing in the Houston area. Then deceased, all other facts about him were unknown. With the name chosen, all they needed was a personification the likes of Aunt Jemima. The man they chose was Frank C. Brown, maître d’ at the Tavern Club in Chicago and 73 years later his image still enhances boxes and bags of Uncle Ben’s products.

Figure 10 Uncle Ben's Rice logo

Today, Texas is the fifth largest rice-producing state after Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and California. The top three rice producing counties now are Colorado, Wharton and Matagorda that grow about 60% of the Texas rice crop. Texas rice production and processing adds $200 million per year to the state’s economy according to the USA Rice Federation.

Figure 11 Rice production counties

Texas rice farmers are dependent on favorable elements to ensure good crops and if they are lucky, more than one crop a year. Water is of primary importance, which is why many of the large producing counties are situated on a river water source. As an example, according to the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) “…coastal rice farmers began using the waters of the Colorado River in the 19^th century, more than 40 years before the Highland Lakes were created.” Therefore, LCRA is bound by two reasons to be responsible to the rice farmers under Texas law: (1) The state must give preferences to certain types of water usage when granting water rights. In other words they may sell stored water (which may be curtailed during water shortages) to other entities under the LCRA Management Plan which is subject to state approval. (2) State water law says that, “first in time is first in right.” The rice farmers’ use preceded that of Highland Lakes and the dams may not even have been built without the farmers’ backing. Thus they satisfy “first in time.”
River water costs less than well water but is unreliable in years of drought. So rice farmers are always looking for the best methods of conserving water. Fields are now leveled with precision GPS and laser -guided grading equipment so that water is added a uniform 5 inches deep.
Seeds, herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers are all applied by plane. Economy, quantity and frequency are judged carefully especially in the case of the chemicals.
Below is another crop possibility for Texas rice farmers according to Shelby Webb writing for the San Antonio Express. His article was titled, “Demand for crawfish has given rice farmers a new option.”

Figure 12 San Antonia Express-News 1-02-2020.

Southwest of Beaumont the Reneau family rice farm is now devoted to 70% rice and 30% crawfish. And the plan is to split the crops at 50-50. Back in August 2018, the family drained the land and added the crawfish who buried themselves in the mud. The rice was harvested leaving 1 inch of stalks in midfall and the field was flooded again. By December or early January, the mudbugs crawled out of their castles and began feeding on the decaying rice stalks until being harvested between January and May.
Crawfish have increased in popularity not only in the U.S. but globally as well, so now some Texas rice growers are taking advantage of this increased demand.
In case you missed mention of Zizania texana that grows nowhere else in the world besides the first mile of the San Marcos it will show up next month in Rare and Unusual Plants of Central Texas.

-----------Sightings--------

Figure 13 Blue-Winged Teal (Anas discors)

Figure 14 Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Both birds were seen on the pond on Hugo Road on January 27, 2020.

Figure 15 Possomhaw Holly tree on Steeplebrook Dr. (Ilex decidua)

One final sighting is a “must read” by Joe Urbach at this link. nature
R & D Tusch

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[1] Wild rice, Wikipedia.
[2] Wikipedia: Rice processing by various cultures.
[3] Edible Austin 2016.
[4] From the George Fuermann Texas and Houston Collection University of Houston Library