17 Nov 2011 On the farm: Lonoke County couple planting the seeds of success

by Rachel Parker Dickerson

Generations of innovation have kept things growing at the Isbell rice farm in Humnoke in Lonoke County.

Chris Isbell grew up in the area, where his father, Leroy Isbell, has been recognized for his 50-plus years of farming success.

“In about the 11th grade, my dad told me if I wanted to do something else, I didn’t have to be a rice farmer, and I was shocked because I thought I did have to be a rice farmer,” Isbell said. “From that time on, I guess I started making the decision I was going to be a rice farmer.”

Isbell studied business in college but decided he did not like it, so he “defaulted to rice farming with an interest in research.” He met his wife, Judy, at Central Baptist College in 1974, and they married in 1975.

Judy loves being a farmer’s wife.

“I’d never really been on a farm. I really didn’t have any idea what I was coming into when we got married. I used to drive a truck back and forth from the bins to the field. It’s been a lot of fun. There’s some times of year it takes everybody to keep it going.”

One of the major innovations Isbell’s father brought about was laser-leveling all of the rice fields in 1977.

“We started farming just like everybody else,” Isbell said. “Now we don’t have any of the terraced fields at all. They’re all zero-grade. It’s easier. Each one of those little terraces, you have to maintain water levels daily. Most of our fields are 80 acres. You just maintain the water level in each 80-acre field.

“Laziness is the mother of invention.”

About 1990, Isbell went to work on the novel idea that literally made him a celebrity in Japan.

On a visit to California, he met a Japanese man who told him about a breed of premium Japanese rice, Koshihakari, which supposedly could not be grown outside Japan.

It sounded like a challenge.

“I got a globe and lined up Arkansas with Japan. The latitude was right, so I knew it would grow here. I just didn’t know what the quality would be,” he said.

Isbell said in Japan, people are passionate about rice. The texture, flavor and scent are all critical when judging its quality.

“They rate it like wine,” he said. “Grown in different areas, it’s good, better or best.”

Koshihakari is the highest quality, most expensive rice grown in Japan, he said. It is a short-grain, sticky rice perfect for sushi.

Isbell got some seed and began growing Koshihakari. When it was ready, he contacted U.S.-based Japanese trading company Nishimoto and asked them to taste it. Nishimoto said it was good, and Isbell began selling his product to Japanese Americans.

“They couldn’t get it (in the United States),” he said. “It was their passion. They were eating California medium grain. That was as close as they could get.”

In the mid-90s, the Japanese market opened to importing rice.

“Our rice sold with our picture on the bag. They had cartoon characters on the front that looked like us,” he said.

A media storm came down on the Isbell farm. Japanese television stations, newspapers and magazines covered the rice farm in rural Arkansas.

“We were really flabbergasted that it drew any attention at all,” Isbell said.

A market in Japan held a sweepstakes with the prize being a trip to the Isbell farm. Tourists came in busloads.

“The average rice farm in Japan is one acre,” Isbell said. “Most of our fields are 80 acres. They just couldn’t get over the size of it.”

He said while the family farm is 2,500 acres, he has never planted more than 25 percent Koshihakari.

A few years ago, rice prices soared, and it did not make economic sense for the Isbell farm to grow Koshihakari. Instead, they have been growing California medium grain. However, Isbell already had another innovation in the works. His latest project involves crossbreeding rice. It takes several years to make a cross, he said.

“A Chinese friend showed me how. I had some different varieties I thought would make good parents. And I’m inquisitive.”

He has taken the crossbreed to Nishimoto, and they selected it in a blind taste test, he said. In the next year he will be able to increase the varieties to 20-40 acres, providing enough seed to grow the new cross.

Isbell’s son, Mark, has a master’s degree in writing and teaches composition at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but he enjoys his career in farming very much.

“I like to yearly be able to see the beginning and the end of something. Planting turning into harvest – yet have the opportunity to start again the next year.”

Over the years, he said, more and more farms in this area have adopted the same innovations as theirs, although they are unique in farming Japanese rice. He noted his grandfather learned water seeding in California and brought it to the farm. They soak the seed for 24 hours, in which time it begins to germinate. Then they drop the seed from an airplane onto a field already flooded with water.

“The culture of the farm has always been one of innovation and novelty, all the way back to my grandfather. We’ll go through a phase where we’ll do something slightly different. When it’s all over, there’s still that spirit of innovation. It seems to be something new every year. It evidences itself in something different, but it always comes back. We’re on the brink of a new wave.”