How does rice make it to your table?
Every farm town is the same. The economy is based on farming. The businesses in town include, fertilizer companies, crop-dusters, people who sell seed and buy the rice, mechanics, and parts stores. Other business revolve around schools, groceries, and banking needs. (Of course, the bars and liquor stores - farming is stressful.)
Rice Town
- Till the land, then disc the land to loosen it up.
- Fertilize the land, plant and fertilize again. They fertilize using both tractors called spray rigs or crop-dusting (small planes).
- Once the rice has grown to certain height, begin making levies to make sure water levels are the same throughout the acreage.
- In the summer, every morning and late afternoon, check on your levies. You may need to cut a levie to allow water to flow better. (This is dangerous and hard work, as you have to walk your field and shovel - farmers are known to have heart-attacks doing this job.)
- Once the summer is over, it is time to bring in the crop. You start by using large tractors called combines, with an attached header to feed the rice into the tractor.
- The tractor then "dumps" the rice into the buggies, then the buggy "dumps" the rice into semi's for transport to grain bins.
- The rice sits in bins until the market price gets high enough to sell. The rice raised by our farm was generally sold to Riceland and Anheuser-Busch.
- Rice is sold around December. Most farmers do not own their own land, and must split selling price with the land-owner. If the crop was poor, this means they will have to take out a loan to cover all expenses until the next December sell.
Disc, Spray Rig, and Tractor Combine, Header and Dumping Arm on combine Semi, Grain Bin and End Product (You will have to hit Control-N if you cannot see all...I still don't know where to put in the scrollbar function.)
Took these a little while ago. All on Fuji Superia slide film and scanned using god knows what when I was at school. I had a lot more pics, but sadly they were destroyed when some idiot (me) opened the back of the camera with the film still in. 
