The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-02-09
ARKANSAS BEATS JAPAN AS
A FIELD FOR CULTIvATlMG RICE


Of the practices is a survival.
It's only seven or eight years since
the first exepiremental crop was
grown in this terrftory-an acre or so,
planted by a man the neighbors dub
bed a harebrained visionary. You
know how a farmers neighbors will
talk when he leaves the beaten paths.
In the first place, rice had never been
grown in that country; and, in the
next place, this fellow wasn't going
at It right They knew! Nevertheless,
he went ahead to his first harvest,
when. he gathered some rice of very
superior quality. Hhis crop broke no
records, but it proved a point. From
his tiny patch of that year prairie
rice culture has developed to proper
lions that make 1t one of the livest
farming interests in all the south
west. In 1909 rice was harvested
from about thirty thousand acres in
Arkansas. That crop did make a rec
ord-a worlds record: seventy-fve
, bushels to the acre, with an average
net profit to the grower of fifty-fve
dollars to the acre. Not one of The
rice farmers of that year was exper-
fenced in the business; they were
( mostly Northern and Eastern men,
old wheat farmers, some of them; and
others were mere townsmen, who had
been drawn into the work by the fame
of what some of the pioneers had done
, in recent years. The odd feature of
it was that not one grower of all the
lot, whether old hands or novices at
farming, made a failure.
Of course, there's no ST. I1ing It
now. In the season just closed the
harvest was gathered from about one
hundred thousand acres-a threefold
increase in a twelvemonth. The Weld
in 1910 was bit better than in the
preceding year. It foretold that in
1911 the acreage will be trebled again.
Rice growing on these prairies is get
ting something of a reputation.
It's a queer sort of country, from
J. the ordinary farmers point of view.
When it was in the hands of the gen
eral farmers, before the days of rice,
it had no clebity. Ten years ago lots
and lots of raw land were to be bought
for a couple of dollars an acre. Hand
led in the usual listless way of the
: South, where the seasons are all toe
f gentle in dealing with the farmer
= these acres did nothing to distinguish
< themselves. They were just waiting
S Land for Rice Growing.
e It's a fiat country-flat as a pan
d cake: two or three million acres OF
more-maybe twice as much-up ant
), down the district. A goodly part Il
It it natural state, is open meadow: tn
e rest is more or less timbered. Scat
n tered around are hills and rollins
y stretches, but these are counted out
d The true rice land is level; it mus
= be.
n The soil is shallow-from twenty t,
@ twenty-four inches of light loan; the,
y comes sheet of 'hard-pan," water
/. proof as rubber. That's not an idea
n condition for general cropping, for
h drought may sap the soil dry; bu
= it couldn't have been better contrive,
- for rice growing. The "hard-pan
t forms the bottom of a natural basin o
p vast extent and of just the right dept
a for holding the water that's foode
r over the crop.
! Look at an Arkansas rice farm il
e the early spring: you can't tell !
r from any other sort of grain farm il
Iowa or Nebraska. The wide field
l. are dry. If rainwater has stood upoi
r. the surface it has been drained ava
p in bitches. The farmer goes at hi
10 breaking with modern gangplows-
n. sometimes, if his plantation is bi
n enough, with a steam tractor engin
d turning dozen burrows at once The
" the rice is drilled in like wheat-aI
'e in the dry, which renders every ste
ie easv and cheap.
rs When the Seeding plants stand 81
r inches high it is time to put the waite
lg on. The supply comes from well
y. sunk to a depth of about one hundre
mt feet For a field of quarter sectio
o. ten or twelve inch we'll gives waite
ry aplenty 1t is pumped by steam-powe
in into a reservoir, to be distribute
,, thence over the crop. Low earther
tn embankments are built around tn
n fields to hold the water in place. Tw
Of men do all the work after seeding
d, one running the engine and pump, tn
other tending to the embankment
e. and regulating the flooding.
&c This is kept up for seventy-ive {
H. eighty days-until the heads of graf