It’s no wonder Ben Noble jumped at a chance to work for Riceland Foods. Rice and land have shaped his life since infancy.
And like the crops on his family’s farm, Noble has roots deep in the soil of Arkansas County. Raised in “the metropolis of Ethel,” a town near DeWitt so tiny it’s not singled out by census-takers, he is “coming full circle” as the new vice president of marketing and strategy for Riceland, the billion-dollar-a-year farmer-owned cooperative and the world’s largest miller and marketer of rice.
“Rice farming has been part of my personal and professional story all my life,” said Noble, whose great-grandfather William Edward Noble bought acreage near the White River Wildlife Refuge in 1892. The enterprise grew into Noble Farms, passed down to Morris Noble, then to Ben’s father, James “Buddy” Noble, and now run by Ben’s brother Andy. “I was a daily part of it before I left for college at the University of Arkansas. My father is still involved, and my nephews are around the corner” from being old enough to help regularly. They will be the fifth generation of Nobles to till the soil.
The farm’s main crops are rice and soybeans, the staples for Riceland Foods.
“My brother actually purchased the land where a historic marker stands at Crockett’s Bluff marking the spot where rice was first raised in Arkansas County,” Noble said. The marker notes that a farmer named Henry Prange cultivated a small rice plot in his front yard in 1906. A little over a century later, rice is the state’s official grain and Arkansas grows half of the rice produced in the United States, with a market value of $1 billion a year.
Riceland is based in Stuttgart, one of Arkansas County’s two county seats, where the high school teams are the Ricebirds. Noble’s grandparents’ old farmhouse, renovated a decade ago, will give him a nearby base as he starts the new job Sept. 1.
Noble’s career began in Washington, where he spent a dozen years with U.S. Sens. Dale Bumpers and Blanche Lincoln, then served the National Cotton Council, the USA Rice Federation and Troutman Sanders LLP, the public affairs law firm.
“But my wife is from Little Rock, and we had a heart to return home, which we did about seven or eight years ago,” he said. He started a government relations agency, Noble Strategies, and then partnered in a PR company, Aarch Communications Inc., in 2016 with Matt DeCample and Grant Tennille.
Tennille, a former director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, left Aarch last year, and DeCample now runs his own firm, Capital C Consulting.
Aarch is dissolving, Noble said, but much of its PR business will be picked up by Becky Barnes Campbell, formerly of Noble Strategies, and Lauren Waldrip Ward, Aarch’s former director of client services and the wife of Arkansas Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward. The new firm is called Campbell Ward.
Ward has also been named Noble’s successor as executive director of the Arkansas Rice Federation, a trade group.
“It feels great to be going to work exclusively focused on Riceland and its membership,” Noble told Arkansas Business. “So many farm families rely on Riceland, and I’m proud to work with them and add value to their bottom line.”
Noble, 44, has known Danny Kennedy, Riceland’s CEO, for “quite some time,” he said. “We talked about Riceland’s future, and over the last few months it became clear that this was a real opportunity.”
He said the marketing part of the job will be “telling the great story of a great brand.” The strategic facet will include finding more ways “to market the crops our members are producing.” Noble has traveled to both Cuba and China seeking to open their markets to American rice, and he hopes for breakthroughs in both. But the political climate has turned against trade with Cuba, and China poses protectionist food safety concerns “that seem more political than real.” Still, Noble said, Cuba “makes all the sense in the world,” and China — with the world’s largest population and a rice-based diet — could be a watershed.
At Riceland, Noble will take over part of the portfolio of Bill Reed, the longtime vice president for corporate communications and public affairs who retired a month ago after 37 years at the company. (Reed, 64, is now a seminary student, but more on that in a coming Outtakes.)
Noble said Riceland offers him an ideal chance to serve his heritage. “Our members are all farmers, and our board is made up of farmers. I know how challenging it is to manage a farm. You have to be a mechanic, an engineer, agronomist, a marketer and many other things. It’s really a challenge to keep all those plates spinning.”
Especially if they’re piled with rice.
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