Staying ahead of the rice curve

In this expansive classroom, sheaves of rice were the subject matter, and farmers were the students.

Each August as the Mid-Valley crop matures, the Rice Experiment Station north of Biggs opens its research fields to visitors for its annual Rice Field Day. Part master class for farming techniques, part showcase for new kinds of seed, the event attracted more than

200 visitors to the station’s fields Wednesday to learn the latest techniques – and take a closer look at the crop’s past and future.

“You’re looking at 100 years of rice farming in California,” researcher Virgilio Andaya declared to his audience of growers and researchers.

His hip-hugging rubber boots disappearing into the watery soil, Andaya pointed to the bushy crops surrounding him in a green 1,000-foot ribbon: from hardy medium-grain strains that have anchored California farms for decades to experimental breeds being refined for harvests three or five years in the future.

A joint effort of the University of California at Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Biggs station is home to agronomists developing rice strains meant to resist pests and increase yields in the West Coast’s leading rice-producing state.

On Wednesday morning, buses and flatbed trucks carried spectators past neat grids of yellow-green rice plants and the water channels nourishing them. Cryptic signs in numeric codes marked the station’s inventory – here a future vein of basmati, there the roots of another year’s sticky rice crop. Station staff pointed out varieties to harvest earlier or later in the year, or for farmland farther north or south in the Central Valley.

For growers, the foes are legion: stem-attacking fungi, weed invasions, armyworm caterpillars, even soaring costs for pesticides to keep other enemies in check. Wednesday’s tour was, for some, a welcome sort of schooling.

“It’s a continual education; I’ve never experienced two farming years exactly the same,” said Scott Wright, a Dayton farmer who grows rice on 770 acres and has attended the Rice Day for more than 20 years. “It always interests me and I try to learn something every day. This place has done a lot of good.”