A Short History of Rice Farming on the Grand Prairie

Arkansas’ Grand Prairie Region

The Grand Prairie stretches from Dewitt, Arkansas at its southern extremity, northward to Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area near DeValls Bluff.

At the turn of the century, most of the original prairie land was not being farmed. The soil’s claypan made tillage difficult and reduced yields for deeper rooted crops making the land suitable only for haying and grazing livestock.  By 1904, it was realized that the shallow layer of clay made the soil suitable for rice production by enabling the soil to hold surface water.  Well drilling technology for rice production was soon expanded to more than 100,000 acres by 1920 with more groundwater being pumped from the Alluvial Aquifer that could be naturally recharged.

The Rice and Duck Capital of the World – For How Long?

The region’s first water storage reservoir was build along Elm Prong Mill Bayou just south of Stuttgart by A.A. Tindall. Mr. Tindall built the water storage to help irrigate his rice. Thousands of migrating waterfowl began using the reservoir after feeding in the nearby rice fields. Sportsmen and women, as well as the ducks, started flocking to the Grand Prairie region.  With 150,000 acres of rice and 2 – 3 million wintering ducks estimated to be in the area, the Grand Prairie quickly became known as “the rice and duck capital of the world”.

The abundance of groundwater buffered the effects of the Great Depression and the Drought and Stuttgart, Arkansas soon became the region’s largest incorporated town.  Stuttgart became an agribusiness hub servicing the farmers of the Grand Prairie.  During the 1970’s and 1980’s, the allotment system for rice was abolished and rice acreage jumped from 200,000 acres to over 1.5 million acres putting even more pressure on the already unsustainable pumping of groundwater.

Presently, the harvest and sale of rice and other agricultural commodities annually garners a multi-million dollar economic bounty for the region, and, once harvested, these same fields provide exceptional recreational opportunity for thousands of waterfowl hunters. Economically, rice is still the most important crop to the region, but unsustainable use of groundwater for the past 100 years has put the Grand Prairie’s economy and cultural identity at risk.