Windmill Rice Company Built On Quality
TERRY SIMMONS
JONESBORO, ARK.
Arkansas Highway 1 runs for nearly 160 miles from the Missouri line south to McGhee, Arkansas like a jagged cut across the heart of the Mid-South. A cut that divides the Delta bottomlands from Crowley’s Ridge in the north and the Grand Prairie in the south. To drive Highway 1 is to drive the most productive rice growing region in all of America.
It’s no wonder then that Highway 1 provides views of some of the most exciting and innovative efforts in rice farming today. Windmill Rice is just such a place.
As their mission statement says: “At Windmill Rice Company, LLC we are committed: To our customers to provide the highest quality of milled rice. To our producers to offer a fair market and ethical practices. To our employees to nurture a safe positive work environment. To our community to belong and support.”
Ag Watch recently toured Windmill Rice to see what’s behind the gleaming storage bins and bold mission statement. What we discovered was a company dedicated to an ever improving holistic approach to rice.
Windmill Rice Company, LLC broke ground on their facility in 2007 and first began milling product in 2008. Windmill was founded by David Smith, a rice farmer with the philosophy that the best rice would be produced in a chain where the product was cared for from “seed to table.” The cornerstones of this philosophy would be sustainability and traceability: knowledge of where the rice came from and what techniques were used in its production.
According to Windmill’s Plant Manager Nathan Cook, “High quality, safe food for the consumer with quality service/price for the farmer is what we do. You can’t provide a high quality on the back end if you don’t start it on the front end. We’re willing to pay for the quality of the farmer, and we expect to receive quality from the farmer that we can pass on to our customers.”
Windmill Rice Company is accredited by the SQF Institute which sets standards for “safe quality foods.”
Cook says that at Windmill Rice, “Quality defines us.” He says that Windmill wants to pay their farmers a quality price to produce quality grain that can be milled and packaged in the highest quality product for the consumer.
Since its inception, Windmill has sold rice to food processing companies, food service companies, and repackers who sell the rice under their own brand. Windmill’s latest expansion effort is to stake out its own space in the retail segment and sell its own branded rice.
On the environmental and sustainability front, Windmill Rice is a “zero waste” facility meaning that every part of the rice grain is sold. They also contain their tail-water runoff and filter air from their mills before it goes back into the atmosphere. Windmill uses LED lighting in its facility and has a capacitor bank installed for more efficient electricity utilization.
Windmill Rice currently employs 82 people at its facility, which is an addition of 20 jobs in the past two years, and hopes to continue expanding its workforce in the future. ∆
TERRY SIMMONS: Contributing Editor/Farm Director at Ag Watch Network