Enterprising colonists were the first to cultivate rice in America. It began quite by accident when a stormbattered ship sailing from Madagascar limped into the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. The ship's captain made a gift of a small quantity of "Golde Seed Rice" (named for its color) to a local planter.

The highly fertile, flat soil of the Carolina and Georgia plantations proved ideal for rice production. A few hundred acres required from 100 to 300 laborers to prepare the soil, plant, harvest and thresh the rice. By 1726, the Port of Charleston was exporting about 4,500 metric tons of "Carolina Golde," which later became the standard of high-quality rice throughout the world. (Incidentally, Producers has a sample of "Carolina Golde" in their corporate office.) When America gained independence 50 years later, rice had become a major agricultural business.

The war between the states brought an end to the plantation era. This, together with the ravages of hurricanes and competition with other crops, moved rice westward. The sprawling plantations of the Gulf Coast, parceled out to soldiers returning from the war, became a new home to rice crops. Still, high labor costs kept the industry from expanding. The Gulf Coast rice industry became viable only upon the mechanization of farming methods.

In 1884, the Machine Age was beginning to affect every aspect of American life. It was discovered that the broad prairie land of southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas had solid soils which could hold up heavy equipment like the machines used for the production of wheat in Iowa.

A revolution of mechanization followed, establishing what are today's major Southern rice-growing states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas.

Meanwhile, the 1849 gold rush brought people from all nations to California. Among them was a Chinese immigrant population of about 40,000, whose staple food was rice. To feed the immigrants, rice production became a necessity. Farmers in the Sacramento Valley found rice would adapt well to heavy clay soil conditions that were largely unsuited to other crops. By 1920, California was a major rice-producing state.

In addition to the six main rice-producing states, rice is also grown in southern Florida.