Rice fields did not exist in South Carolina, at least not in the late 17th century, when British colonists and the Africans they enslaved began to move from the sugar plantations of Barbados into an area known simply as Carolina. Before the decades of planting and growing rice, before the surge of profits that would make the region outlandishly rich, plantation owners forced African men, women, and children to clear thousands of acres of woods and swamps.
Growing rice is a complex enterprise, one that involves the strategically timed flooding of fields. Soil has to remain moist enough that rice keeps getting nourishment as it grows from seed to sprout to plant, but the water can’t surge so high that it drowns the crop. At Anson Mills, founder Glenn Roberts has helped bring Carolina Gold rice, a locally beloved variety, back from obscurity. If you ask him to expound on the history of the Lowcountry and rice, he’ll begin with a single word: water.
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