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Rice in Arkansas (3)


*By Holly Hope

(Cont’d)

Shaping the land

The early rice crops of Arkansas were planted using the same power sources as cotton, which was usually a team of horses or mules, a few rudimentary implements and the strong backs of the farmers. The relatively level, treeless area of the Grand Prairie did not require clearing so the first step in cultivating the crop was preparation of the land to receive the rice seed. After World War II the bottomland forests surrounding Crowley’s Ridge to the northeast were drained and depleted by the self-propelled tree saw and bulldozers, providing more acreage for rice. These newly opened areas proved to be amenable to rice because the soil contained few species of weed seeds that would provide competition for the new crop.

The dense composition of the soil in the Grand Prairie dictated the use of a sod bottom plow, which would lay the sod over in a smooth movement. Most often, farm implements powered by draft animals required the use of a team of four, often referred to as a four-up. Gang plows fitted with several blades that made parallel furrows would be an ordinary sight in rice fields but the weight of the plow would be considerable even for a team of horses or mules, so the amount of land that would be plowed within a day usually stood at three or four acres.

Plowing would begin in the early fall and continue through the winter.

Around early June seedbeds would be made ready for inserting the rice seed after a period of land preparation. Early twentieth century seedbed construction would usually be accomplished with eight-foot, single-disk harrows pulled behind a four-up, plows or tractors to reduce sod furrows to small hunks. Drag harrows consisting of staggered bars of curved teeth could be pulled behind the disk harrows to further break down the clods of soil and complete the leveling process. Due to the stress on the team and the farmer from the constant, weighty drag of the equipment and the heat of the season, seven acres would usually be the safe maximum for a day’s work creating seedbeds in the field.

Plating the seed

The seed drill had been invented in the early eighteenth century but some farmers simply sowed rice seed through broadcasting by hand. If this was not done properly the rice would not germinate, or if it developed on the surface the exposed seedlings could be killed by frost, blown away or eaten by birds. In the absence of harrows to cover the seeds with soil, some early farmers would use large, leafy tree branches. By the time the Grand Prairie had become an important commercial rice center, the equipment of Midwestern immigrants made the rice farmer’s task easier and seed planting more efficient.

The grain drill was such an implement imported from the Midwest in the early twentieth century. Powered by four animals, the turning wheels of the sixteen-hole drill would provide power to transfer seed into tubes from a hopper and then into trenches previously opened by a series of disks. The trenches would then be filled in by round trace chains or spike-toothed drags that were positioned behind the disk openers. The drill provided farmers with larger yields because it insured the formation of uniform trenches, which would provide the proper amount of moisture from the soil and reduce waste of seed through early or late germination. Small, animal powered drills were utilized into the 1930s but soon steam and gasoline tractors influenced a change to larger, more technologically sophisticated drills that would cover larger tracts within a day’s time.

After World War II surplus military airplanes were put to use on a large scale in agricultural applications. The most well known was the use of planes for crop dusting, however, as early as 1938 J.O. Dockery of Stuttgart had begun experimenting with air seeding in a straight wing Waco plane on a local farm. Dockery’s experiments were the first use of air seeding outside of California as he planted by air in various soil conditions and investigated several types of dispersion systems to facilitate even distribution. Seeding by air on wet fields in the Grand Prairie was not as prevalent as it was in Pine Bluff and other eastern areas of the state that contained buckshot clay so the grain drill remained the most popular and less expensive seeding method in the Prairie for the time being. After World War II new chemicals were released for use by civilians and fertilization of the rice fields in the Prairie began. After the fields were flooded farmers could not fertilize so airplanes were used to distribute pellets by air. Dockery was also instrumental in the invention of a fan shaped spreader with vanes that applied fertilizer evenly on fields.

(to be cont'd)



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Photo: A top-of-the-line combine manufactured by American company like Case International or John Deere may cost around US$225,000.00 a piece. But I saw two Australian-made New Holland CR970 belonging to a farmer in Stuttgart, Arkansas as shown in this picture. Each of them costs US$250,000.00. Do the imported combines perform better? I have asked that question and the answer was a smile. The owner told me that there must be some good reasons for him to spend the equivalence of a regular sedan on each machine, but he declined to make a comparison.


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