Rollen Chalmers: Rollens Raw Grains (Levy, SC)

The Southern Fork

Rice was South Carolina’s first great agricultural staple. Before the American Revolution, it had already made South Carolina the richest of the 13 original colonies, and Charleston one of the richest cities in the world. But it did so on the backs of enslaved skilled laborers, most of whom had been kidnapped from the rice growing regions of West Africa. For hundreds of years, they and their descendants built earthworks, tended, cultivated, harvested and processed rice all by hand in remote locations in the subtropical forests and swamps of the Southern US coast.

After the Civil War, the cultivation of rice dwindled but was still part of the culinary culture of blacks and whites alike. However, little by little less flavorful rices began to take over the table and the variety, Carolina Gold, threatened to disappear completely. But of course, that’s not the end of the story, but the beginning of another one. Close to 20 years ago, a rice revival in South Carolina began and Rollen Chalmers was right in the middle of it, applying his knowledge and equipment used to grade land for construction to rice field engineering. He, you’ll hear, is bringing the cultivation of rice full circle in his family with Rollens Raw Grains in Levy, SC, which was just recently featured in the Washington Post. He’s gone from experimenter and researcher to rice farmer, and in the process has helped once again bring Carolina Gold Rice to tables across the world, and taught plenty of other farmers how to engineer fields so they can grow it too.

Other episodes related to this one:

Glenn Roberts: Anson Mills & AM Research (Columbia, SC) Southern Fork Sustenance: A Conversation with MacArthur Fellow J. Drew Lanham about SC Barbecue & Beyond