Despite the Oil Spill, Louisiana Rice is Still Nice

So far, paddies and their burrowed 'mudbugs' are OK

17 June 2010

When rainfall is plentiful, rice grows into lush plants above the shallow water in which it's planted.

Since Louisiana leads the United States in the production of rice, a lot of people wonder whether the oil that has spread into the state's marshes from the gushing spill offshore will threaten this year's crop.

So far, the answer is no. Even though some of Louisiana's quarter-million hectares of rice farms are located within shouting distance of bespoiled marshes, rice ponds rely on fresh water from wells and rainfall - not saltwater that, even without oil, would kill tender plants.

USA Rice FederationLooking at this harvester, you'd think this was a wheat field. It's rice, all right, gathered up in a wide pond that's been drained.

The ponds' earthen banks are also home to finger-sized shellfish called crawfish. And these mudbugs, as some call them, are about to become an even more important part of the region's seafood platters now that shrimp, oyster, and crab harvesting has been shut down in affected areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

From the air, much of South Louisiana still looks like a quilt dotted with picture frames. The frames are levees that hold in the water for paddies in which rice is grown. And it's from low-flying airplanes each spring that pilots sow the rice crop by tossing seeds from 900-kilo bags into the wind. The farmers call it flying the seeds.