SEEDING THE FUTURE
Rice planting in Mequon is historic first for state
Eight Hmong immigrant women from Laos and a Marquette University researcher made Wisconsin agricultural history this week as they stood in ankle-deep, watery mud to plant domesticated rice seedlings at the Mequon Nature Preserve.
A 3-horsepower mechanical transplanter joined them in pushing 250,000 seedlings into the soil of a 1-acre rice paddy at the low end of a former cornfield.
“This is the first time there has been commercial-scale rice production in Wisconsin,” said Michael Schläppi, an associate professor of biology at Marquette.
His goal is to convince farmers and other property owners that hardy domesticated rice varieties developed for cold, northern climates on other continents can be grown and harvested for retail sale in Wisconsin.
Schläppi does not expect Wisconsin to compete anytime soon with rice growers in Arkansas or California.
But he believes there would be demand for the grain.
“This would be the only locally sourced rice for stores and restaurants,” he said. If the plants survive the summer, he expects to harvest the grain by late September or early October.
Schläppi backs up his evangelism with experience. He has been planting seeds and growing rice for five years in small plots on the rooftop of the Wehr Life Sciences Building on the Marquette campus. Three years ago, he added small plots at Alice’s Garden Urban Farm on N. 21st St. in Milwaukee.
For this first effort on a large farm field, Schläppi selected a short-grain rice variety from the Black Sea area of southern Russia. The altitude and climate there are similar to Wisconsin, he said.
His campus research focuses on the genetic makeup of rice varieties that control cold tolerance. The large-scale cultivation at the Mequon Nature Preserve is funded through a grant from Marquette University, he said.
At the preserve, a 1-acre strip along the edge of a former cornfield was carefully leveled with the aid of a laser this spring to create the paddy. Berms separate the paddy into four sections to better control water levels.
This low end of the field was a former wetland drained decades ago for agriculture and farmers in southern Wisconsin could use similar acres for rice production, Schläppi said.
Hand labor was provided by Hmong residents of Milwaukee County. They were recruited for the task by Steve Petro, farm
manager for the Fondy Food Center in Milwaukee.
The center rents 20 acres at the former Stauss farm on the northwest corner of the nature preserve. Petro rents plots of up to 1.5 acres in size to the Hmong farmers.
Schläppi paid each of them a daily wage to help him with the planting.
On Monday, Lue Her of Milwaukee videotaped a few relatives planting rice in the Mequon paddy. He was born in Laos and immigrated “at a young age” to the U.S. with his parents, Her said.
Megan Yang, a niece, was planting rice seedlings for the first time, he said.
Two of the women working in the paddy — Mao Yang and Yer Vue — immigrated from northern Laos two years ago. They regularly planted rice when they lived in Laos.
The women bent down to insert clusters of three seedlings at a time into the mud with one hand. A shallow poke secured the plants in place.
Each woman maintained alignment of her row and spacing of seedlings by stepping backward to line up the next plant. They held more seedlings in their other hand.
No attempt was made to keep pace with the mechanical transplanter driven by Erik Andrus of Vermont. Andrus, a Whitefish Bay native, and his wife, Erica, bought Boundbrook Farm in the Champlain Valley of Vermont in 2005.
He started experimenting with growing cold-hardy rice in 2011 and currently plants 5.3 acres with northern Japan varieties.
Andrus sold a used mechanical transplanter to Schläppi and helped out with the planting this week in Mequon as a paid consultant and project booster.
Mats of rice seedlings were placed on a wide tray at the rear of the transplanter. As Andrus steered, paddles on a steel wheel at the front of the machine dug into the mud and pulled it forward.
Schläppi stood above the tray and pushed down on the seedling mats. The tray slowly moved back and forth as six forks on rotary arms below the tray plucked off small chunks of three to four plants and pushed the seedlings into the mud.
In a few years, Schläppi intends to publish a guidebook and videos on rice cultivation in Wisconsin.
He already sounds like a farmer when he complains about cold spring weather delaying planting seeds in small trays at the nature preserve. Slow growth of seedlings then delayed transplanting until this week, Schläppi said.