As farmers begin harvesting this year’s rice crop, they will be using sophisticated machinery that southwest Louisiana’s first commercial farmers would never have dreamed of. At least one historian suggests that the machine that made all the difference wasn’t intended for rice at all.
When rice first came to the Louisiana prairies, Cajun farmers planted small crops in places that couldn’t be plowed — along coulees and ditches, next to bayous or in ponds. The Cajuns just threw rice into the standing water. What came up they called “Providence Rice.”
German immigrants were the first farmers in southwest Louisiana to raise rice for market and to see the potential of growing rice on high land. Until that, the prairie was used only for grazing half-wild cattle. That had begun to change by September 1880, when the St. Landry Democrat reported:
“At the lower end of Faquetaïque Prairie, at what is usually called ‘German Settlement’ the land has always been considered completely worthless. But this year about 4,600 barrels of rice will be produced in that neighborhood and within a very small compass, not extending up the prairie, which is quite narrow here — not more than three or four miles. This rice in the ‘rough’ will net about four dollars per barrel. So we have here a small neighborhood where they used to produce absolutely nothing for sale, a revenue of $16,000. The rice lands in this neighborhood, the marshes, which were once considered not only worthless but a nuisance, are now the most valuable; and it will not be long before they cannot be bought for any reasonable price.”
The crop became a mainstay in south Louisiana after the railroad cut across the prairies, connecting New Orleans to Houston, and the prairies to larger markets. Rice from the Nicholas Zaunbrecher farm at Roberts Cove was the first to be shipped by rail to New Orleans. The rice was brought to Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée by wagon, loaded on a boat, then reloaded on wagons for the remainder of the trip to the railroad.
The harvest grew from there. In 1886, Southern Pacific shipped two million pounds of rice from the prairies to New Orleans. Six years later, rice shipments had grown to 200 million pounds.
But, according to southwest Louisiana historian Donald Millet, the first truly large commercial rice crops began when farmers from the Midwest came here with the idea that they could grow wheat. That didn’t work because there was too much clay in the soil.
They grew rice instead, and in 1884 used for the first time a machine, called the twine-binder, that had been invented by Cyrus McCormick who is best remembered for invention of the mechanical reaper. The binder was used to tie the top shocks of wheat (or rice) together for easier harvesting and handling.
“It is true that German settlers in the 1870s had produced rice for commercial purposes,” Millet wrote in a study of the industry, “but this was never done on a large scale. With the introduction of the twine-binder and other mechanical devices within a short time thereafter, rice production soared. Sizes of farms increased from a few acres in the early 1880s to hundreds and thousands of acres by the end of that decade. The demand for mechanical devices increased in proportion to the size of farms and the demand for rice.”
You can get an idea of how quickly the industry grew by looking at railroad car loadings from the prairies. Southern Pacific shipped about 250 cars of rice in 1884; over 1,000 in 1889; 2,000 in 1890; 5,000 in 1891; and 10,000 cars in 1892 and 1893. And that was just the beginning.
In 2017, Louisiana farmers harvested $313 million worth of rice grown on 400,000 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s a pretty good jump from throwing rice in a puddle and letting Providence take over.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
