Rewriting the Legacy of Rice
In Arkansas, a Black rice mill owner leans on ancestral wisdom to seed a path forward.
By Ashia Aubourg
Photos by Yasara Gunawardena
There’s more diversity in the knees under the tables that consume the food than the hands that grow the food,” says PJ Haynie, who, as a fifth-generation row crop farmer, has been working to change that. Building upon his family’s legacy as land stewards, PJ is tracing the lineage of his ancestors to create a road map for his future. What began with him stepping in as a farmhand on his father’s operation at the age of 10 has grown into decades of experience cultivating corn, barley, wheat, and soybeans. Now he has his sights set on reclaiming rice.
PJ is the great-great-grandson of one of the first Black people in the U.S. to survive enslavement and purchase land—60 acres in Northumberland County, Virginia, in 1867. Awareness of his ancestor’s tenacity prompted young PJ to learn the inner weavings of farming from his kin before even entering fourth grade. Today, PJ and his four sisters continue to work on their family’s farm, managing nearly 4,000 acres of reclaimed land.
In 2010, PJ played a key role in establishing the National Black Growers Council, an organization that supports Black row crop farmers in the southernmost parts of the United States, which eventually brought him to Arkansas. That’s where he and fourth-generation farmer Billy Bridgeforth founded the Arkansas River Rice Mill in 2021, to expand the vision of his predecessors’ ambitions. With no prior experience, PJ began learning how to plant rice on raised beds and how to furrow irrigate, an ancestral practice that involves channeling water down long trenches through the crops.
“The first thing I learned was that rice was only grown in six states in the U.S.,” says PJ, whose days are so busy we rescheduled our phone interview several times. Of those six, Arkansas, nestled in the Lower Mississippi Delta, accounts for a staggering 40 percent of the nation’s rice production. “The second thing I learned,” he apologetically continues, after putting me on a brief hold to join a call with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “was that within those six states, there are over 40 rice mills, but the industry did not possess any diversity. When we closed on this facility, we became the only Black-owned rice mill in the country.”
To comprehend the significance of this, it’s important to understand a particular sliver of rice history. Two types of domesticated rice exist worldwide. One is Oryza sativa, more commonly known as Asian rice. The other is deeply intertwined with the traumatic history of transatlantic enslavement.
Nearly 3,000 years ago, land stewards in the floodplains of Mali’s Inner Niger Delta cultivated Oryza glaberrima, a hearty rice that nourished West African communities. In the 1500s, amidst the horror of European colonizers kidnapping, imprisoning, and forcibly transporting African folks, these sacred grains were stolen. By the 17th century, enslaved Africans faced constant violence and demoralization, and many in the southern states—including Arkansas, Alabama, and the Carolinas—were forced to produce rice for trade and profits they would never see.
Despite an African legacy of pioneering rice cultivation practices—including irrigation techniques that encouraged luscious crop yields and the creation of tools for milling and winnowing grains—much of this ancestral wisdom was deliberately and systematically destroyed by colonizers to prevent it from elevating future Black generations. Enslaved ancestors resisted this path forward, and now, in this pivotal moment, PJ stands to rewrite this centuries-long narrative of Black communities getting stripped of their food sovereignty.
With the capacity to produce 22 metric tons of rice in an hour, the Arkansas River Rice Mill has the means to resume and rebuild a tainted legacy. After purchasing the abandoned mill and its surrounding farmland, and setting up raised beds for rice production, PJ’s first order of business was obtaining a food-grade certification. (The mill got its start selling rice to pet-food companies.) After receiving the green light in the fall of 2022, PJ pursued institutional buyers and has since sold rice to organizations around the country, including the USDA and universities. “Our rice has gone to the Republic of the Congo and Kyrgyzstan for international food aid,” PJ says. “Sysco stocks our rice for the Stanford University and UC Berkeley dining services.”
PJ began cultivating the grains in 2022; he and his family grew nearly 700 acres of rice the following year. Now Arkansas River Rice Mill produces, processes, and sells 12 varieties, including long-grain white and brewers’ rice.
PJ envisions a future where Black farmers can work to close food-insecurity gaps plaguing communities. There’s an abundance of rice being produced in the U.S., “and we still have people hungry at night,” he says. To contend with these hurdles, the entire farm production system must be reimagined. Right now, he says, there are a lot of intermediaries. While there is no simple solution, increasing capital for Black farmers to build the processing infrastructure for their crops is a place to start. With a history of financial blockades from government institutions, this funding could operate as a form of reparation.
“Post-slavery, a lot of folks were looking for their 40 acres and a mule, and a lot of them didn’t get that,” says PJ. “But the ones that did ended up with land out here in rural America and faced discrimination from the USDA in their lending process. And that’s where those disparities from the past create present-day inequities.”
With the decimation of ancestral knowledge, owning a rice mill involves relearning how to formulate a reciprocal relationship with the land, ensuring it’s livable for those yet to come. “My aspirations are for the future,” PJ says. “My children are the future generation, and I would love for them to have the option to farm, if they desire.”
Rice, while nourishing, can have devastating environmental impacts if grown irresponsibly; right now, rice production accounts for up to 11 percent of the world’s methane emissions. “With standing water on the soil,” explains PJ, “microbial activity takes place, and it releases methane gas,” which is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Haynie Family Farms
PJ Haynie has a very full plate, but continuing “business as usual” is not his MO. His next big idea is a Haynie Family Farms endeavor. Once you spend time on the farm with PJ, you see that his passion is for his crops. As we walk through his soybean and rice fields, he runs his hands over each and every one of the stalks, inspecting them to see which are ready. He speaks with his workers daily and frequently. He loves to show off his combines, which are indeed impressive harvesting machines, but most of all, he loves to tell you about the future of his crops. PJ says Arkansas River Rice Mill is the “now,” producing grains and beans that are mainly used for secondary products like soybean oil or feed. But Haynie Family Farms is the “future.” It’s through this project that PJ plans on truly putting “farm to fork,” by selling long-grain brown rice directly to consumers, which will make Haynie Family Farms the first Black-owned rice mill to do so. Look for it in the near future.
The Arkansas River Rice Mill relies on a technique called AWD (alternate wetting and drying) to mitigate this problem. AWD is a regenerative practice that reduces irrigation water consumption in rice fields, lowering methane emissions by 30 to 70 percent. “So on our farm, 100 percent of our rice is produced in a climate-smart way,” explains PJ. “We are growing rice in the most sustainable, environmentally friendly way possible.”
In the damp prairie lands of Arkansas, Black land stewards like PJ are working to transform the food system so that it prioritizes nourishing communities, honoring the environment, and protecting rural farmers.
“Us farmers, we plant, we pray. I haven’t been around rice as long as my ancestors, but we are sowing seeds in the ground. Food is the one thing that connects us all. There is no culture without agriculture,”
reflects PJ. “If you woke up this morning and your car didn’t start, you’d be okay. If your lights didn’t come on, you’d be okay. If you didn’t have your computer or phone, you’d be okay. But if you could not break bread and consume nourishment, you would have a problem.”
