The Rice Paper

The Carolina Gold Rice Foundation (CGRF) is pleased to share with you our first issue of The Rice Paper, a quarterly newsletter dedicated to historic heirloom grain horticulture, related foodways and culture.

The CGRF (founded in March 2004 as a 501 (C) (3) not for profit corporation) was a natural outgrowth of the Carolina Gold Rice Symposium Planning Committee Dr. Merle Shepard organized last fall, bringing together rice planters, agriculturalists, cultural historians, culinary professionals and scholars. In the short time since its inception, the CGRF has embarked upon a number of wide ranging projects.

So far we have:

• created the Symposium program and raised 50% of the funding required for its presentation;
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• formed strategic partnerships with Clemson University, Middleton Place Foundation, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston, the Charleston and Gibbes Museums, and others;
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• begun a 5-acre study of Carolina Gold Rice (CGR) production near Edisto Island using non-invasive, sustainable agricultural management;
• presented our first regional heirloom grain management seminar in Savannah;
• established a worldwide Heirloom Grain Research and Education Network linking entities such as the Asia Rice Foundation with the CGRF.;

The flow of creative ideas and the CGRF’s ability to transform these ideas to reality continues unabated.

I would like to thank everyone involved with the CGRF for their creative and financial support and to invite those new to our endeavor to support the CGRF, and experience the thrill of cultural discovery.

Glenn Roberts
President & CEO

While a small group of local entrepreneurs began to experiment with growing commercial Carolina Gold Rice in the mid-1980s, Clemson University’s Coastal Research & Education Center (CREC) in Charleston attempted their first crop of Carolina Gold Rice in 1998. The goal of CRECs experimental crops has been to grow a rice having the color and flavor of the original Carolina Gold with a better yield than the original.

According to Hal Hanvey, farm manager at the CREC, the initial rice seed came from two sources, part from a local private party and the balance from the USDA Germplasm Repository in Aberdeen, Idaho. After the first few crops, the seed generated from the private donor’s supply was returned to him. Hanvey has continued to plant crops and generate seed from the special accession rice from the Idaho facility.

One of the weak points of Carolina Gold is the height of the stalk. It is a tall growing variety and tends to fall over in the field, which reduces the yield of the crop. In an attempt to lower the grain stalk, CREC has worked with renowned rice breeder Dr. Gurdev Khush of the International Rice Research Institute. He crossed the Carolina Gold Rice with a number of modern varieties of rice hoping to develop a variety that would maintain the basic characteristics of Carolina Gold but reduce the stalk height of the plant.

CREC initially planted all of Dr. Khush’s crossed varieties, narrowing the selection to twelve varieties in 2003. This year the CREC has planted the four most successful varieties of Khush’s original twenty-five. According to Hanvey, in this final four he will be looking for the variety the best maintains the color and flavor of traditional Carolina Gold yet grows a stalk at a height more common to the modern varieties which will improve yield.

After 170 years Carolina Gold has returned to Middleton Place and is being grown in a quarter acre demonstration field on the Ashley River. Middleton Place is the only public site in which visitors can see rice growing in an authentic setting. Using seeds from last year’s crop, the field was planted by a crew of staff and volunteers on April 30. Fresh water from the Rice Mill Pond is used to flood the rice field because the river water is too high in salinity. We believe this is the same method of flooding practiced on the Middleton Place fields during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The field and its growing crop expands the Foundation’s ability to interpret rice cultivation and plantation slave culture, and lends an extra dimension of meaning to self-guided tours of the Gardens and to the structured African American Focus Tour. Two illustrated panels adjacent to the field describe the labor-intensive growing process, and an observation platform provides a near ground level perspective for visitors to experience being surrounded by rice.

Re-establishing the Rice Field’s viability as part of the historical agricultural operation of Middleton Place has enhanced the plantation experience for everyone. With some help from Mother Nature and careful attention by Foundation staff, enough rice will be saved from hungry birds to provide seed for next year’s crop.

The first-ever aerial planting of Carolina Gold Rice took place on May 21, 2004, when a specially outfitted turbo-prop Air Tractor monoplane dropped 800 pounds of pipped, or pre-germinated, CGR seed onto 2 flooded antebellum rice fields at Prospect Hill near Edisto Island, SC.

The CGRF launched this field trial to explore the feasibility of state of the art non-invasive sustainable management of CGR under a grant from Anson Mills. The fields were made available to the foundation by the McLeod Corporation, Mr. Campbell Coxe of Darlington, SC, and the Rhodes Family of Charleston.

This study is being coordinated by Hal Hanvey, farm manager of Clemson University Coastal Research and Education Center, and Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills under the supervision of Dr. Jack Rhodes and Dr. Merle Shepard. Hanvey was responsible for pre-germinating the rice, arguably the most difficult part of the study. “This is state of the art seed preparation used frequently in America’s best rice farms,” Hanvey said. “Pipping rice and broadcasting it into a flooded field results in dramatic sustainable weed suppression and a commensurate reduction in foreign variety at harvest.”

Mr. Hanvey’s travails began 3 days prior to planting. Following USDA National Organic Program guidelines he submerged 800 pounds of CGR seed in OMRI approved chelated zinc solution. He calculated the pipping time based upon ambient conditions, and previous experience with pipping rice for Clemson's sustainable field earlier this year and had to remove the rice from the solution at 1:30 am to make the planting deadline. “I had to be ready to put all 800 pounds of seed into the cooler if necessary to retard germination if the process was going too fast,” he said. “If the pipps (shoots) get too long, they tangle and won’t come out of the aircraft drop gate.”

On Friday May 21, at 7 am, Hanvey and Roberts hauled the pipped CGR to Charleston Executive Airport and assisted the crew of Steed Flying Service in loading the seed into the aircraft. The aircraft departed for Prospect Hill, broadcast the CGR seed into both fields and returned to the airport in less than 45 minutes. Don Steed, an experienced Louisiana rice crop pilot and owner of Steed Flying Service, said his aircraft can plant as many as 50 acres of rice in the same amount of time.

Hanvey and Roberts note that sustainable rice management using pipped rice and aerial planting addresses many ecological, quality and yield issues raised by continuous conventional rice management. Dr. Jack Rhodes states that both fields under study –while not officially certified organic—are managed according to USDA National Organic Program guidelines. Dr. Merle Shepard said this study focuses attention upon issues that challenge the future of conventional rice production in the Carolinas and Georgia: increasing chemical costs associated with conventional rice management, as well as depleting water resource allocation. “All of us associated with the CGRF are excited to be able to move forward and begin to answer questions arising from the intersection of Carolina Rice production, wildlife habitat and our coastal environment,” Dr. Shepard said.

A consortium of academic and private groups under the direction of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation (CGRF) will sponsor a symposium in Charleston, SC, on Rice. This public meeting will explore the biology, history, culinary applications, nutrition, dissemination, agriculture, and cultural influence of Carolina Gold Rice, the staple crop of the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, and Carolina White Rice, the southern crop that would become the favored rice of South America. A particular interest of the Symposium will be to explore the recent revival of Carolina Gold agriculture in light of the growing public hunger for foods and foodways that express traditional southern identity.

The Carolina Gold Rice Symposium, August 18-20, 2005, will gather food enthusiasts, chefs, scholars, and makers of traditional and regional foods for panel discussions, keynote lectures, tours of Carolina Gold Rice fields, and a rice bread competition. It will feature elegant events highlighting dishes prepared with Carolina Gold Rice by prominent local chefs and caterers, viewing of local art and material culture exhibits featuring the world of the Carolina Rice Planters, and a Lowcountry BBQ of rare breeds of rice-fed poultry and pork at Middleton Place Plantation.

Some of the speakers and presentations that are currently scheduled for the Symposium:

Dr. Peter Adler, Dr. Merle Shepard, and Bill Wills, “The Great Duo of Colonial South Carolina: Carolina Gold Rice and Malaria”
Dr. Judith Carney, “Slave Culture and Heritage—West Africa to Carolina Rice Plantations”
Campbell Coxe, “Contemporary Rice Production in South Carolina”
Charles H. P. Duell, “Welcome & Introduction to the Plantation Landscape of Middleton Place”
Dr. Thomas Hargrove, “The Odyssey of Carolina Gold Rice from Indonesia to Africa and Carolina and on to the Confederados Amazon”
Dr. Bernard L. Herman, “The Architecture of the Carolina Rice Plantation”
Dr. Joe Kelly, “Plant Succession in South Carolina Tidal Former Rice Fields: Ecological and Human Use Indications”
Dr. Gurdev Khush & Dr. Anna McClung, “Genetics and Improvement of Carolina Gold Rice”
Dr. Daniel C. Littlefield, “Carolina Rice & African Know-how”
Clint Noren, “Restoration of Carolina Gold Rice at Middleton Place”
Dr. Richard Porcher, “Market Preparation of Carolina Gold Rice: Harvesting, Threshing & Milling”
Glenn Roberts, “Sustainable Restoration of Historic Ricelands—an 18th Century Solution for 21st Century Carolina Gold Rice”
Dr. Richard Schulze, “Introduction of Carolina Gold Rice 1685, Reintroduction of Carolina Gold Rice at Turnbridge Plantation, Bluffton, South Carolina, 1985”
Dr. David S. Shields, “Witnessing the Creation of Carolina Rice Culture, circa 1776”
John Martin Taylor & Karen Hess, “The Carolina Rice Kitchen-Past & Present”
Tracey Todd, “Colonial Interpretive Presentations—Plantation Rice Production”

Registration materials for this event will be available soon!

We are pleased that the following organizations have pledged their support in co-sponsorship of this event:
Middleton Place Foundation, Charleston
The Clemson University Coastal Research & Education Center, Charleston
The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston
The Charleston Museum, Charleston
Johnson & Wales University, Charleston
Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World Program, College of Charleston
The Agricultural Society of South Carolina