Bill Reed
Bill Reed spent his career on the Grand Prairie, but he was raised in the Tennessee mountains. In retirement, he’s aiming for even higher ground, at least metaphorically.
“I always thought it would be neat to go to Dallas Theological Seminary,” said Reed, who retired a month ago after 37 years at Riceland Foods in Stuttgart, finishing as senior vice president for corporate communications and public affairs.
“I once heard a conference speaker say that a guy who is 60 years old and in good health probably has 25 good years ahead,” Reed told Arkansas Business. “And I thought, the folks working under me at Riceland are very good, ready to take over, and I’d been considering taking a leadership role at my church [Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, where he leads young adults]. So I started online two years ago, and I’m about a quarter of the way” to a seminary degree.
He plans to knuckle down finish the degree, he said. “I’ve had a great career in agriculture, and I’m still hugely interested, but the spiritual side is a vision of mine, and I hope to get there.”
The agriculture interest began in Lake City, Tennessee, recently renamed as Rocky Top, where a helpful county extension agent inspired him to attend the University of Tennessee. “My grandparents were subsistence farmers who ate what they grew and grew what they ate. They had chickens, ducks and hogs; I raised pigs as a 4-H project.”
As a college junior, he won a 4-H scholarship and spent a summer with DeKalb, the Illinois seed company now owned by Monsanto. “I wanted to work in the genetics lab,” Reed said. “They said, ‘What about the communications and marketing department?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s your money!’”
It wasn’t like a job, Reed said. “It just seemed natural and fun. So I finished up requirements for my plant science degree and loaded up on electives in the UT communications college.” For graduate school, there was only one stand-alone agriculture journalism program at the time, “and that was in Madison,” at the University of Wisconsin. Reed took his master’s there.
In 1976 he was recruited by the University of Arkansas’ Cooperative Extension Service, working out of Little Rock as a print media specialist. He and his wife, Janice, loved it. “Arkansas was new to us, and it seemed that every weekend we’d be in some new town for a new festival.” Riceland called in 1979, and except for a year and a half as director of communications for UT’s Institute of Agriculture, he was there until he retired.
“The late ’70s were quite a challenge because agriculture was in turmoil, with high interest rates, low prices and farms going under.” But personally Reed did well. “I enjoyed communicating with farmers, and my goal was to speak for the rice industry.”
Richard Bell became president and Riceland’s CEO in 1981, and Reed often traveled with him to testify before Congress; Bell eventually called on Reed to testify. “I said what if they ask a question I can’t answer?” Reed recalled. They can’t, Bell replied. “They’re congressmen, they can do whatever they want,” Reed said. But Bell insisted Reed couldn’t be stumped, for a simple reason: With his background, he’d know all the answers.
“It was a great career,” Reed said. “I’ve known all the senators and House members from Arkansas since the early ’80s. David Pryor on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Dale Bumpers on appropriations. Blanche Lincoln was the first female chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She learned to drive by taking her father from Helena to Stuttgart for Riceland board meetings.” Reed counts former U.S. Rep. Marion Berry as a friend. “Relationships with those people and their staffs were deeply rewarding. Those staff folks make that operation run.”
Reed offered no parting advice for Kevin McGilton or Ben Noble, Riceland vice presidents who are taking over parts of his portfolio. He called McGilton capable and experienced, and he has a fond history with Noble. “I’ve known Ben since what I think was his first week working for Bumpers. He had lots of energy; he didn’t walk anywhere. He was always running.”
About eight years ago, when Reed was covering rice issues at the Arkansas Capitol, he told the Arkansas Rice Federation he was being run ragged and needed some help. “Here came Ben Noble, moving to Little Rock to work for the rice industry. When he took the job at Riceland, I told him that now I was responsible for two of his career moves.”
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