East Meets West in Lonoke County

By Howell Medders

Chris Isbell lives in England, grows rice in Arkansas, has it milled in Stuttgart and sells it in Japan. How's that for a global business?

Actually, England is a town in Lonoke County and the Stuttgart is the one in Arkansas County, but the Koshihikari rice really is sold in Japan.

Japanese consumers buy rice by variety, and Koshihikari is one of the most popular, says Isbell, who harvested 400 acres of that variety in 1997 for delivery to the Itochu Trading Company. Itochu markets the Arkansas-grown Koshihikari to the retailers, including 3,500 Family Mart convenience stores in Japan.

Isbell is not sure of the exact translation of the label on the packages of his rice in Japan. It says something like "Chris' Rice" or "Isbell's Rice". But he is sure the label clearly states that the rice is grown in Arkansas.

"My goal is to promote Arkansas as a source of rice for Japan," he says.

The success of the Arkansas-grown Koshihikari has been a big story in Japan, where many believed the premium variety could not be grown successfully anywhere else. Since 1995, when Isbell's rice first sold in Japan, the family has hosted several dozen bus tours at their farm (only two hours from Graceland).

They give frequent press interviews, and the Japanese public television network sent a film crew to their farm to produce a 90-minute documentary. Twenty-five winners of a contest for customers of the Family Mart chain received a trip to the Isbell farm in August. They came to see the rice growing and have their picture taken with the man whose image adorns the packages of rice they buy.

One frequent, and welcome Japanese visitor is Yukindo Tsuno, a retired agricultural scientist who has visited 36 countries in a search for the best place to grow Japanese rice outside of Japan.

"Dr. Tsuno tells me Arkansas is the place he's been looking for," Isbell said. "We are at the same latitude as Japan and out climate is almost exactly the same."

Isbell started growing Koshihikari in 1990, but his rice was not marketed in Japan until 1995, when the Japanese government agreed to import rice under the GATT treaty (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) that lowered trade barriers for many commodities around the world.

"There are problems that many farmers won't put up with," he says . "The biggest problem is lodging," which occurs when rice plants won't support the weight of the grain and fall over, making harvest very difficult.

"It takes a little bit different mind set. You have to consider quality first and bushels second. The more nitrogen you put on, the more bushels you'll get, but also the more it will lodge and the poorer the quality of the end product will be," he says. He runs weekly plant tissue tests to fine-tune nitrogen content.

"Getting it milled was hard until Riceland got involved. They had to shut down a mill and do just this rice and then go back to long grain. Now that they have decided to support this market, it's going to be easier," he says.

Riceland Foods, Inc., mills the Koshihikari to a brown rice and ships it to the Itochu Trading Co., which mills it to white and packages it for retail sale.

Itochu also handled Koshihikari grown on about 75 acres in 1997 under contract by six farmer members of the Riceland cooperative, says Shifflett, Riceland's vice president for rice marketing.

"How well the consumer in Japan likes our rice will be the key to our success in this market," Shifflet says. He adds that the price paid to growers will have to be high enough to make it worth the complications of growing Koshihikari,

Frank Lisko of Slovak says his small field of Koshihikari was easy to grow, but it took two to four times longer to harvest and the yield was about 100 bushels per acre compared to 150 or more from other fields.

"The straw stays so green. it is hard to separate the kernels from the panicles and it just blows out the back end of the combine. We probably left 20 to 30 bushels per acre in the field."

Lisko says the harvest time, wear and tear on equipment and lower yields will have to be factored into the price farmers receive.

If Riceland's small 1997 crop sells well in Japan and if growers are interested, the contracted acreage may be expanded slightly in 1998, Shifflet says.