By KENNETH BRIDGES
Across the globe, rice is the staple of life. Far more than wheat and other grains popular with the average American consumer, rice is the most important portion of meals in hundreds of millions of households each day. Arkansas has been the leading rice producer in the United States for decades, all due to the determination and imagination of William H. Fuller of Lonoke County.
While native to Asia, rice first began to be grown in North America in 1694 in South Carolina. Rice required flooded fields and hot climates to grow properly, which made the work very difficult. Modest attempts to grow rice in Arkansas were reported as early as 1819 at Arkansas Post, near the confluence of the Mississippi and White Rivers. Further attempts were made in the early 1840s but failed again.
Fuller, a Nebraska native, had grown up after the Civil War. He arrived in the Carlisle area in the latter 1800s and established a successful farm. Paul Williams, an African-American farmer and fellow Lonoke County resident had begun experimenting with rice cultivation on his own in 1893, but the results were mixed. Fuller became fascinated with rice after seeing the efforts of Williams as well as witnessing the success of Louisiana rice fields on a hunting trip. By 1897, Fuller began his own experiments on three acres. After the results fizzled, he travelled to Louisiana to learn rice farming firsthand. In 1904, with new water pumps and techniques, he tried again on 70 acres and produced an astonishing 5,225 bushels of rice.
Area farmers were inspired by Fuller’s success, and the rice industry took off in 1905. Investors and land dealers streamed through the region, anxious to see the progress of the crops. By 1907, a profitable rice mill had been completed in Lonoke County. Within four years, enough farmers had begun producing rice to form the Rice Growers’ Association of Arkansas. Stuttgart held its first Rice Carnival in 1909 to celebrate the impact rice was just beginning to have. The event would become a popular annual festival by 1918. Weiner and Hazen would establish their own rice festivals in the years to follow. By the end of World War I, Arkansas had become the second-largest rice producer in the nation, and the industry was still growing.
Fuller himself would remain a leading spokesman for Arkansas rice production through the 1910s. By the 1920s, rice production would rival cotton, long the heart of the state’s agriculture. Arkansas was the leading rice producer in the nation by the 1940s. Thousands of Arkansans would come to be employed by the rice industry, and rice itself would be declared the state grain in 2007.
Globally, the United States ranks eleventh in total rice production, well behind such nations as China, India, and Indonesia. Nearly all the rice produced commercially in the United States today is produced in portions of six states: California, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. In 2014, the US Department of Agriculture reported that 28 eastern Arkansas counties produced rice. The state remains by far the leading rice producer of the nation, with nearly 60% coming from the Natural State. In fact, the state by itself produces nearly as much rice as South Korea each year.
One man’s vision had started a revolution in an industry that had stayed largely the same for generations. William Fuller lived his last years as a celebrity among farmers in the state, hailed as the “Father of Arkansas Rice.” Just a century after his inspiration, rice had become a billion-dollar industry in Arkansas.
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Publish date : 2025-01-17 07:00:00
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