Rice Growers: Rice Growers in Africa

Rice Growers in Africa

Home

Pictorial Record - Master Index

Online Tour of Ms. Catherine's

Educational Resources

Information for the Public

Figure 137. Rice growers in Africa

It was Africans who brought knowledge of rice cultivation to this country. They also brought wise methods of farming that they had developed over many centuries in Africa--methods that cooperated with nature, rather than trying to control nature. At Mars Bluff, they planted tiny fields of rice on low land and relied on nature to send rain to water the rice. As recently as the 1920s, twenty-one African Americans at Mars Bluff where still carrying on this African tradition of growing tiny fields of rice on low land where water collected naturally. (Map by Dinah Bervin Kerksieck.)