“They homesteaded, they had options to go buy land when my ancestors were slaves,” said PJ Haynie, a fifth-generation row cropper who grows 1,000 acres of rice on the Arkansas Delta and co-owns a rice mill. “After slavery, most African Americans got what was left over, which was mostly marginal ground.”
“Because these fields are so flat and it’s such low-lying land, rice is the only thing that won’t drown out when you get a 6-inch rain in the middle of the summer,” Haynie said, turning the grain in his hand. “Corn, soybeans, cotton — they don’t like to get their feet wet.” Carroll knows. She grew up in Poinsett County, Arkansas, flagging the rice-seeding planes to the furrows on her family farm before GPS took over that hard work.
Rice requires quite a lot of water, and there is no shortage of water in Arkansas. This year was especially wet, according to the National Weather Service in Little Rock, Arkansas. Through April, Pine Bluff got 27.79 inches of rain — that’s 9.06 inches above average.Arkansas has another advantage over other rice-growing states, positioned as it is with access to both the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, important shipping arteries.
Another downside of rice is that it’s one of the leading methane-emitting crops. The standing water it tolerates acts as a natural herbicide and pest control, but it also creates an anaerobic environment that emits greenhouse gas. “What I say is that, if we protect the herd, the herd will grow,” he said. “If we protect the small amount of Black farmers that are left in America, it will create opportunities for their children and grandchildren, their nieces and nephews.”Haynie co-owns Arkansas River Rice, a Pine Bluff rice mill, with Alabama farmer Billy Bridgeforth. The operation, which Haynie said is the only Black-owned rice mill in the United States, can process 22 metric tons of grain an hour.
That’s just one of the reasons Black farmland ownership has dramatically declined across the U.S., he said.