Gopher Rice grown by Keith Mearns of the Historic Columbia Foundation 2019
Gopher Rice, a Southern Upland Variety 1870-1950
Our common picture of rice growing usually envisions a diked water impoundment filled with densely packed green shoots. It’s the picture on travelogues of Asian countrysides. It is the image depicted in the photographs of Lowcountry plantations growing Carolina Gold. Since the 18th century there has been another way of growing rice in the United States—upland field culture. Sometimes farmers grew the same varieties that were used in the paddies of the Lowcountry—Carolina Gold, or Honduran White, or a 20th century hybrid. But sometimes they employed rices bred specifically for drier field/garden culture: upland rices. Two such upland rices inspired much fascination among agriculturists at the turn of the 19th century: the red bearded upland rice brought from West Africa in 1789 and the short season Cochin China white rice brought to the southeast and West Indies about the same time. When we became aware of Moruga Hill Rice from southern Trinidad in late 2016, we discussed the history and properties of these historic upland rices. But they were not the only varieties to have been planted in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. There were several and enjoyed local vogues, grown for feed for fowls and for local markets. One of these varieties enjoyed popularity in South Carolina from the 1870s onward and in Florida in the early 20th century—gopher rice.
In a survey of small grains published in 1920, Mark Alfred Carleton observed that the largest area of rice growing outside of the four major American growing districts (Carolina, Louisiana-Texas, Arkansas, and California), took place in Florida, “where the upland or “gopher” rice is grown on prairie land.” (The Small Grains, 616). An contemporary interview with rice farmer A. A. Chancey, who grew on land west of the Hillsboro River, lays out the qualities and uses of gopher rice: “The straw is tall and heavy, and heads of grain are large and well filled. The field was ready for harvest last week [i.e. 9-7-1920] . . . . The grain is practically a household necessity, furnishing a food of great value, particularly in its natural or unpolished state, and the straw makes a good stock food. Of course the whole grain may be fed to stock, but the present price of rice makes it almost too valuable for stock food.” [Ocala Banner (September 17, 1920), 12.] The yield per acre of gopher rice averaged 80 bushels. 66,000 acres of gopher rice were cultivated throughout the South in 1917.
First recorded by the name gopher rice in 1876, it was first displayed at the American Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia by Dr. P Prichard of Beaufort, South Carolina. Its character was distinctive among American grown rices at that time with grains that were “broad, flat and heavy.” It was an awnless rice and grown exclusively east of the Mississippi River, and mostly in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. During the twentieth century the principle seed broker was Kilgore Seeds of Plant City, Florida. It was known by the name Highland Rice in other spots where upland rice cultivation was undertaken—in Gulfport Mississippi in the 1910s. Newspaper articles from the late 1930s reported scattered small scale planting of “highland rice” . . .”These in the main are cultivated by negroes and the swampseed is flailed and winnowed by primitive methods” Charleston News & Courier (February 16, 1938), 4. The largescale planting of gopher rice in Florida during the Depression.
A caveat: not all rice called “Highland Rice” was gopher. A white upland rice that resembled Carolina Gold, but without the distinct golden husk, was grown in parts of the South. IN 1876 Paul F. Hammond, a grower in upstate noted the following: “There are two varieties of rice: namely, gold rice, which grows only with water culture, and white rice, which may be grown with either wet or dry culture. Of the latter I have planted three distinct sub-varieties, and there are, probably several others. The hardiest and most productive is a flat rice, known under several names—Guinea, Gopher, Bull-head, &c. Owing to the peculiar form of the grain, it is not adapted to the machinery of the pounding mills, and the millers have found it to be so troublesome to prepare for market that they decline to work it on toll. This greatly diminishes its value as a market crop.” His other two varieties were a tall growing West Indian variety that suffered rot and from cold, and “ordinary white” or Carolina highland white. (“The Cultivation of Upland Rice,” Weekly Union Times (September 26, 1879), 2. ] While 1870s millers may have objected to processing Gopher rice for polished product, there had been in Carolina a lively trade in rough rice, or unhulled grain rice since the 1830s. There were two streams to this trade: one went to the feed markets, the other to overseas millers who were not so finicky about adjusting their stones to strip gopher or any other kind of rice.
There is little documentation where Gopher Rice came from. Its alternate name Guinea Rice suggest West Africa, but in the post-Civil War period when this variety first appears, seed was sometimes being procured from the West Indies, as Paul Hammond’s writings indicate. What is irrefutable is that there is in the USDA GRIN several strains of an upland rice that had a long history of field culture in the American South, particularly the most tropical regions. Texas A & M University became interested in the variety and bred several different strains, also preserved in the USDA Small Grains Repository.
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx?1050077