CAIRO, Ill. – Living along the Mississippe River provides fertile ground for farming, but it is also prone to flooding. 

Illinois farmer Blake Gerard turned this to his advantage by planting rice. Today, Gerard farms more than 2,500 acres across Alexander and Union counties. He lives in the southernmost tip of Illinois, where the Mississippi River carves its way past miles of fertile river bottom land

“People kept saying you can’t grow rice here,” Gerard said. “I had the crop growing in the field and they’re like ‘you can’t grow rice, we’re in Illinois, they grow rice in elsewhere, but not in Illinois.’”

Gerard saw what others didn’t: abundant water, fertile soil and an opportunity to turn flooding to his advantage. And what pushed Blake to pursue rice in the first place were floods in 1993, 1995 and 1997.

“We wondered what in the world we would do,” he said. “We didn’t have crop insurance back then. I thought, this is absurd, I have to find something that will grow in water. I thought about growing fish, but it doesn’t work here. Then, the river showed me how to take something that was my nemesis and turn it into my friend.”

Gerard’s journey with rice started in 1990, when, at the age of 20, he left college at Mississippi State to take over the family farm following the death of his father. Transition wasn’t easy, as nearly a decade of floods repeatedly ravaged the family’s traditional crops.

Then, in 1999, Gerard made a bold move that stunned area farmers as well as his own family – he planted his first-ever rice crop in the flood-prone McClure bottoms. He turned to experimentation and planted his first crop of just 40 acres of rice, adding the title of one of the nation’s northernmost rice producers to his resume.

At about the same time, Gerard and his partner, Jim Crain, began growing seed rice and started their own seed company: River Bend Rice Seed Co., a contract seed company which now supplies rice and soybean seed across more than 10,000 acres annually.

And their key product is Cahokia Rice, a low-glycemic, high-protein strand. They named the new product Cahokia Rice because of the history of the Cahokia tribe of Native Americans who farmed in the area generations ago.

“Cahokia Rice is higher in protein that conventional rice, offering 53 percent more protein per serving,” Gerard said. “It has a low glycemic index of 41, making it suitable for diabetics and those monitoring blood sugar levels.”

Each growing season, the crop is rotated among the fields to increase soil fertility and support sustainability. The rice crop is harvested at just the right time each year to maximize quality and protein content. Then, rice stalks from the harvest are plowed back into the ground to act as a natural fertilizer for future crops of Cahokia.

Gerard’s fields are slightly sloped to hold water about four inches deep on one side and two inches on the other. The agronomic principles are similar to other crops. They converted farm machinery to run on tracks due to the wet ground. The growing season starts around April 1, or whenever the ground reaches 50 degrees.

Harvesting rice is similar to that of corn and soybeans. Once the grains are harvested, it goes to a facility in Cairo to be dried, cleaned, packaged and shipped down the river.

“I grow several different kinds of rice. It’s all long-grained rice. And the good thing for us is we can utilize surface water to irrigate our rice and that’s very efficient,” he said.

Agriculture is a major economic driver in Illinois and 85 percent of the Prairie State is covered in fields, most which grow corn.

“Most people assume that their rice comes from Asia, but in fact, 80 percent of the rice that Americans eat is grown right here in the U.S.,” Gerard said.

His Cahokia Rice was first sold in 2018. They have one employee who markets the brand and is actively seeking a distributor to have it in grocery stores. As of today, several restaurants and schools have used his rice.

“Illinois State University and others have picked us up,” Gerard said. “Universities tend to like the protein content because many students are self-conscious about what they eat, and many eat vegetarian or vegan. Chefs told me Cahokia Rice is a good fit for them because they are always looking for ways to add protein to things they are already serving. There are others selling high protein rice, but it’s an additive, not part of the kernel itself, like ours.”

Grown worldwide, rice is a primary staple in half the world’s diet. In the U.S., six primary states lead the way in production that accounts for just 2 percent of the rice grown globally, according to the USDA. The USDA doesn’t list Illinois as a production state, but Gerard is pioneering the way to make it one.

The USDA reports rice is also grown in Florida, California, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma.