Anheuser-Busch Teams with USA Rice to Improve Water Efficiency

Beer brewing giant Anheuser-Busch was already a top consumer of Arkansas’ top export.

But the interest in rice doesn’t stop at the brewery door.

Late last month Anheuser-Busch announced it was investing in the Rice Stewardship Partnership, co-led by USA Rice and Ducks Unlimited, committing $50,000 to efforts aimed at improving water efficiency, riceland preservation and wildlife protection. 

Anheuser-Busch, through Busch Agricultural Resources Inc., has 15 agricultural facilities across the nation, including a milling facility in Jonesboro that employs 42 and produces 8 million hundredweight of southern, long-grain paddy rice raised in Arkansas and southern Missouri.

The brewer joins an eclectic group of financial supporters, government agencies and private groups collaborating under the Rice Stewardship Partnership to fund, promote and create sustainability strategies within the rice industry. 

“They have partnerships, proven methods and proven techniques and I think it was just a good fit,” said Bill Jones, Anheuser-Busch’s Rice Agronomy Manager at the Jonesboro mill. “The legwork that they’ve done, with some of our help and assistance, we’ll just widen that impact.”

Rice is a $4 billion industry in Arkansas and is the state’s top export. Anheuser-Busch is the nation’s top end user of domestic rice, annually using close to 17 million bushels from close to 300 growers.

Of all milled rice in the U.S., 75 percent goes to beer production. 

“Multiple Anheuser Busch brands are made with Arkansas rice,” said Josh Hankins, Rice Stewardship Partnership Coordinator for USA Rice. “The relationship they have with the growers in Arkansas, many of which have been supplying rice for their beers for 40-plus years … a lot of the folks here in Arkansas don’t understand that a lot of the products they consume are made with Arkansas Rice.”

Water use efficiency plays a major role in the sustainability efforts, and it is one of the four pillars of the beer maker’s 2025 sustainability goals announced in April. Jess Newman, director of U.S. agronomy for Anheuser-Busch, noted that the company has reduced water usage at its facilities by 38 percent over the past 10 years and continues to focus on smart and sustainable water use and agricultural practices. 

“We think it’s a win for us because we’re really focused on our 2025 sustainability goals,” Newman said.

In Arkansas, rice fields play a major role as waterfowl habitat, which factors into the state’s status as one of the world’s top duck hunting destinations.

Some of Arkansas’ leading conservationists through the years have been sportsmen while Ducks Unlimited was founded by conservationists to help preserve and protect waterfowl habitat nationally.

USA Rice President and CEO Betsy Ward noted the rice-duck relationship in a statement.

“USA Rice’s partnership with Ducks Unlimited and with great members like Anheuser-Busch have enabled us to provide much needed financial and technical support to conservation minded rice farmers who are working to continuously improve their operations and hopefully see a positive return on their investments in both future profits and achieving their sustainability goals,” Ward said.

Arkansas’ first commercial rice crop was planted on the Grand Prairie more than 100 years ago. Technology and specialized planting and harvesting methods have made the state’s rice farmers less dependent on weather, but water is still, of course, the lifeblood of the industry.

Today’s famers have pump and levee systems to create uniform and controlled flooding and the clay soil helps with water retention.Improvements to these systems have been aimed at minimizing water loss and improving water retention.

Among its objectives, the Rice Stewardship Partnership aims to bring new technologies and methods to bear on irrigation strategies. Hankins said the partnership exists to augment and enhance the efforts of farmers who are already applying successful water conservation efforts, some of them cutting their irrigation efforts in half.

“That’s why partnerships like this are so important,” he said. “You have to have federal and private industries joining the conservation industry, trade organizations, USDA and the agencies they have on the ground … They have working relationships with a lot of the farmers.”