Welcome, everyone.

I'm Charlie.

And I'm Veronica Musgrove, joining you for a celebration of foods grown in Louisiana.

Louisiana Harvest of the month is a collaboration between LPI and LSU AG Center.

It's a digital first series that we are excited to share with you right now on television and streaming live.

There's nothing more Louisiana than crawfish and rice.

And right now we're going to learn how these staples in Louisiana cuisine are produced.

Let's go crawfish.

And y'all enjoyed this first episode.

Hi, friends.

I'm Krystal Betsy of the Louisiana Farm to School program.

This month's Louisiana Harvest of the Month never backs down from a fight, always raising its claws, holding its ground.

Instead, its even honored as the totem of the native home of people.

For its courage and resilience, its crawfish.

This savory crustacean was of great importance to the original peoples in Louisiana, all the way back to their origins story.

For Louisianans today, crawfish is woven into our culture and traditions.

Today, I'm in Roanoke, Louisiana, at Tallgrass Farms to learn more about how this tiny creature makes such a big splash in Louisiana Aquaculture.

Although people have always eaten them, crawfish were first commercially harvested from the Atchafalaya Basin starting around 1880.

Before that, most crawfish were caught wild when the river or bayou waterways would flood.

All you needed was a pole with some bait.

Thanks to growing popularity, the Louisiana crawfish industry began to soar over the last few decades.

Rice farmers looking to boost their income when the rice prices declined began to flood their fields after the rice harvest to farm crawfish in the off season.

Today, more than 1500 farmers collectively harvest nearly 86,000 tons of crawfish each year.

From February to May, I'm here with Bert Jay of Tall Grass Farm.

Bert has a 460 acre rice and crawfish farm, and today he's going to show us the crawfish, his habitat and harvesting process.

So, Bert, tell me about let's go back to the beginning.

Tell me about how you got into farming in the first place.

Well, I've been on the farm all my life.

My grand.

This is my grandfather's farm.

He settled here about 1890, thereabouts.

Been.

We've been growing rice on the farm ever since.

About 26.

27 years ago.

I started doing crawfish on the farm.

Year after year.

Crawfish, rice.

Crawfish, rice.

Rice is planted in March, when the rice crop is tall enough around me.

Flooded fields are stocked with mature crawfish.

Once the rice is ready to be harvested around the end of July, fields are drained and the crawfish instinctively bury into the ground where it's cool and they stay there until the fall.

In October, ponds are flooded and crawfish emerge from their burrows with several hundred babies attached to the tail of the mothers.

Beginning in January, fields are flooded to about two feet of water.

Crawfish are then harvested and brought to market, where the catch will peak in April and May and the cycle continues.

Let's talk about the actual crawfish.

Can we look at one?

This particular variety is called the Red Swamp crawfish that we have here.

It's called Precambrian.

Clark II is the is the Latin name for it.

And this is what we has, the beautiful tail meat that everybody associates with the Louisiana crawfish.

So are there male and female crawfish?

And how can you tell the difference?

There definitely are.

I've got a female crawfish here.

She's got a little dot between her legs there.

That's where she lays her eggs, which she gathers on her tail.

When we pump up the old rice field to become a crawfish pond, she's going to emerge from that that burrow with anywhere from 300 to 700 eggs cupped on her tail.

So they are tiny, tiny take about four months for for an egg to become a marketable size crawfish.

So do you do anything to feed the crawfish?

Not a thing.

This is a completely natural process.

We put water on our old rice field and nature does everything else.

So can you tell me about the benefits of.

How does the crawfish and rice work together?

What are those benefits?

The beautiful thing about rice and crawfish in rotation is the crawfish uses all the infrastructure that we normally use that we had been using for our rice crops for years.

So it was a natural to go from rice to crawfish.

So let me tell you about the trap.

Yeah.

Everybody in the industry is using a trap pretty similar to this.

There's three holes and the trap we call funnels.

This is how the crawfish get into the trap.

We put a piece of stinky bait in the top of the trap.

They smell that oily fish.

They crawl all over this trap until they finally find one of these funnels and they get in and they just stay there.

They're not very smart.

Okay, well, I think from here, after you get lots of sacks out of the pond, we move on to the processing facility.

But before we do that, let's go over to Judy and see what she's got cooking up in the kitchen.

Can't wait.

Hello.

I'm Judy, my hand from LSU.

And here we are at a crawfish farm.

It's so beautiful here.

So crawfish, it's actually low in fat, crawfish tails loosely packed into a cup way five ounces and supply about 100 kilocalories.

Most of those calories come from protein.

We came up with some recipes for crawfish that take advantage of that wonderful flavor.

Really easy to prepare in the classroom.

So using some Louisiana rice and seasonings, we created a wonderful four ingredient, Cajun crawfish rice that can be easily prepared in an instant pot.

First thing that we do is we sort our trinity, our vegetables that are onions and celery and bell pepper, and then we and after we've sauteed it a little bit and some butter, we're going to add rice, the crawfish and our seasoning and cook.

It takes about 10 minutes when you're using white rice in the instant pot and then you're going to cook it for about 10 minutes.

Then do the quick release and you have beautiful crawfish rice.

Would you like to try some?

I would.

All right.

It all sounds good to me.

You did a good job.

All right, now you're on the edge of a crawfish pond.

That's right.

Good job.

That's right.

We're good.

We've got some skills.

So why don't you go and catch up with Crystal?

We're going to show one more recipe here, and I'll see you later.

Thanks.

Really.

We're going to show you how we get the crawfish to market.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Now we're going to prepare the crawfish dip or filling.

And you can do this in a microwave oven or in an instant pot, which we're going to use today to make it savory.

We added garlic and chopped vegetables and some seasonings like some Cajun seasoning, smoked paprika, delicious crawfish and pimentos.

We are going to saute the chopped vegetables and a little butter to start with, and then we're going to add the rest of the ingredients and cook it in the instant pot.

Now, while that's cooking, I'm going to show you what we like to do with the crawfish dip.

We can use it as a filling so we can take pie crust that you can buy in the grocery store.

I find mine in the dairy section.

I roll it out and then I use about a four inch cutter to cut little circles to use to make the crawfish hand pies, place a little dip in on the side, fold it over like that, pinch it, and then bake it in the toaster oven.

And those recipes are on the Seeds to Success website if you want to give them a try.

We love to eat crawfish, but did you ever wonder what crawfish like to eat in the wild?

They dine on insect eats and something called zooplankton.

Crawfish are a good source of minerals like iron, calcium and potassium that are essential minerals that are often low in the American diet.

So eat more crawfish.

Here we are at it.

Crawfish.

We followed the crawfish just a short distance down the road to the processing facility.

And so this is where the crawfish is going to be cleaned, sorted and packaged for distribution.

Crawfish farmers like Bert bring and sell their catch to processing facilities like this one for marketing and distribution.

The mesh bags they deliver contain crawfish in a mixture of sizes straight from the pond.

Those bags are called field run.

The facility sells these filled run bags to customers without washing or grading them.

Crawfish destined for markets such as restaurants, are washed before moving into a machine grater where a conveyor system sorts them by size.

The larger crawfish are then bagged and placed in a cooler, ready for distribution.

Support Stories about Louisiana on LP for $15 a month, you will receive the Louisiana Harvest of the Month combo that includes the seven piece stainless steel garden tool set, including a large and small trowel cultivator, handbrake, wheater, pruning shears and an Oxford cloth tote to keep all your tools neatly stored.

The fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round Hardcover cookbook by Helena Brickman and an LP Outdoor Picnic Blanket support LP at $10 a month to receive the fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round Cookbook over 100 recipes of Louisiana's favorite cuisine that reflect our state's year round growing seasons published by LSU Press.

Or for just $7 a month.

We will send you the LPI outdoor blanket for springtime picnics at the park.

You've seen some wonderful thank you gifts here at Help.

We are willing and wanting to send you right now.

Hi everyone.

I'm Charlie.

And I'm Veronica Musgrove.

Thanks for joining us and welcome to this presentation of this digital first series that we're so proud to bring you at in collaboration with the LSU AG Center.

It's funded by the USDA and also the Louisiana Department of Health.

And I hope that you're learning so much about where your food and how your food is grown.

And this is wonderful because this is the farm to school program.

It has three aspects growing food in schools such as in the classrooms and gardens, as well as sourcing and purchasing local products for the cafeteria or the classroom.

And third, incorporating agricultural and nutrition education in the classroom, learning.

That's real life learning in my book and the wonderful thing about this is these are just short videos.

So, you know, 10 minutes, 11 minutes, get the kids they need to start young, learning where their food comes from.

It's so easy to not know where the food come from.

Yeah, Walmart.

Or you go to the grocery store, right?

You know, go out to the farm, go out to the crawfish farm or the rice farm.

That's what we're exploring right now and sharing with you.

It's a very important adventure.

As Veronica said, it's with LSU's AG Center, partnered with LPI so that we can educate the masses and especially the young folks.

That's right.

That's right.

Me, a city girl.

You know, I went to the grocery store to get my groceries, but as I've gotten older, I've really appreciated going to a farmer's market and meeting those farmers and learning about how they they produce their crops and then bringing that fresh food home to cook and make make for your families.

And kids need to learn at a young age.

You're seeing us because this is our pledge drive and and we really want to send that invitation out to you to make a donation right now to help.

So, Charlie, we have a challenge.

And this challenge is Mary Sue and Ron.

Gary are proud to support the programing on LPI and are challenging all viewers to donate right now.

And they will match dollar for dollar the first $6,000 called.

And during this program in effect, this will make your donation worth twice as much for APB.

We want to hear from you right now.

And right now you're going to have one more look at those special thank you gifts.

Then we're going to learn a little bit more about Rice support Stories about Louisiana on LP.

For $15 a month, you will receive the Louisiana Harvest of the Month combo that includes the seven piece stainless steel garden tool set, including a large and small trowel cultivator, hand rake wheater, pruning shears and an Oxford cloth tote to keep all your tools neatly stored.

The fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round Hardcover cookbook by Helena Bregman and an LP Outdoor picnic Blanket support LP at $10 a month to receive the fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round Cookbook over 100 recipes of Louisiana's favorite cuisine that reflect our state's year round growing seasons published by LSU Press, or for just $7 a month.

We will send you the LP outdoor blanket for springtime picnics at the park.

My friends, I'm Krystal Bessey with the Louisiana Farm to School Program.

This month's Louisiana Harvest of the Month has a long history in Louisiana.

Although it's not native here, it's actually one of several contributions brought from West Africa to the southern table.

It's rice.

Rice is an essential ingredient in Cajun cuisine, such as gumbo, jambalaya, et two.

Faye and Boudin joined me here in Acadia Parish.

As we uncover the grains of truth behind this simple, hearty dish, Rice is the seed of a grass called ARISA Sativa, which originated in China.

Due to its ability to grow in a variety of climates.

It spreads in many parts of the world, and it's now grown on all continents except Antarctica.

Rice came to Louisiana around 1718, along with enslaved Africans that held a wealth of knowledge on rice cultivation.

When sugarcane and cotton growing declined on plantations after the Civil War, Rice became the agricultural commodity that it is today in Louisiana.

As one of the top producing states today, Rice is one of the world's most produced grains, feeding billions of people every day.

Today, we're here in Acadiana, the French region of Louisiana is better known as Cajun country.

It was here that the indigenous people relied heavily on corn, along with fish, shellfish and wild game before rice was grown here.

I'm here at the Tiverton Farm with Ross Thibodeaux.

He's joining me today, and he's a fourth generation farmer and partner in his family's business.

They grow rice, soybeans and crawfish.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Well, yes.

Thank you for having us today.

Can you walk me through the life cycle of how you plant and grow rice and then harvest in Louisiana?

It starts back in the fall.

And this field was a crawfish pond.

It was flooded with the traps in it.

And then after the crawfish season was over, we drained the water out of it.

And then prepare it, plow the ground, got it ready.

And then the next spring we planted the rice in it.

Okay.

So it kind of drills a hole and puts the seed in the guts of fat in it, and it puts the seed into the hole and it covers it up.

Okay.

Rice grows well in water, which acts as natural pest and weed control.

Early settlers would flood their fields with nearby rivers and bayous, and some farmers continue this practice about six weeks after the rice is planted.

It's time to flood it up.

So we pump it back full of water.

When the grains are full and fully formed, that's when you have a mature rice plant.

Okay, so the field stays flooded while you're letting it grow, Right?

And then when you see that that the rice is about to be ready to cut, you'll drain it again and come in with it.

Come on.

Come on.

separates the grain from the plant and throws the plant back out and the grain goes in the hopper.

Then we put the water back on it again and flood it deep.

And then in January, we'll put traps in and start harvesting crawfish.

Okay, so it's a crawfish rice rotation.

Well, thank you so much for having us at your farm today.

I'm excited to see what happens after the farm, the the mill process.

But first, let's take a look at what delicious rice dishes Judy has cooking up in the kitchen.

Hi, my name is Judy, My hand.

And I'm here today with Casey Nader at Supreme Rice.

So, Casey, tell us what you do here.

So after the premiere, I smell I manage primarily the the custom harvest operations.

So we will custom cut rice for our rice growers.

Everything that's involved with that, basically on the field side.

Okay.

Very interesting.

So rice is a really starchy grain and it's a staple ingredient for more than half the world's population because it's really versatile and easily available.

There are many different types of rice, brown rice, which is my favorite because of its nutty flavor.

And as a nutrition educator, I also like it because it hasn't been refined.

It has a different storage requirement because white rice that's been refined has a longer shelf life.

One of the benefits of the brown rice is that it's high in dietary fiber.

The rice that we're cooking today is brown rice, and I'm going to cook it using a method called the pasta method.

No particular measurements are required.

Just bring that pot of water to a boil and then gradually add the rice to it while you stir it a little so it doesn't settle to the bottom.

Then let it simmer for about 35 minutes for brown rice.

But if you're doing white rice in this way, it only takes about 18 minutes.

So it's really quick.

Rice does have a risk of foodborne illness because there's an organism called bacillus serious so that if rice is left at between 40 and 140 degrees, which we call the danger zone, that toxin is heat staple.

And so you have to be really careful about that.

So what I always tell my students, remember, it's called Bacillus series.

And for a short we call it be serious.

And I tell them when you're storing your rice, be serious.

That means get it right, cool it after you've cooked it, get it right into a container, get it into the refrigerator, cool it down fast.

So today we're fixing two of my favorite rice recipes.

Since I have a lot of leftover cooked rice.

Leftover rice is best for things like stir fry because it doesn't have the starchy coating on it.

It's been cooked and hydrated and gelatin ized, and then you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight or even longer.

And then the sticky outer part dries out so that you can put it into the hot fat and it won't sizzle too much.

Now we're going to make some pineapple fried rice with Louisiana shrimp and Louisiana rice.

So what I've done is I've chopped up green onion, red bell peppers, some yellow onion, and we're getting ready to add those to the pan.

And you'll notice our beautiful serving container.

Yes, I love it, because what makes this fried rice extra good is that we serve it with cold pineapple.

The contrast of the flavors is just great.

So delicious.

It's really good and good.

Here we are at the Supreme Rice mill, the largest mill operation in the state.

And they have two locations, one in Crowley and one in Vermont.

All it's been selling locally made rice under the label Supreme Rice since 1936.

And joining me here is Kyle Henry.

Thank you so much for having us.

Welcome.

We're glad to have you guys here.

He is the milling manager for Supreme Rice.

And Powell is going to take us on a tour of the mill here and show us a little bit more about how Rice milling works here at Supreme Rice.

We process over £1,000,000,000 of rice each year, with 60% of it going to export business to other countries and 40% being packaged and sold here in the United States.

We take the rice in from the field, we remove the stalks and dirt that may come in from the field, and then we take the shell off, which is the tough outer covering that you see, Which will we call rough rice after the shells are moved?

You see brown rice, all rice starts out as brown rice and people do buy and eat that as something you can find on your shelf.

Well, we take all brown rice, which is how it comes after taking the shell off.

And we would do what is called brand removal.

Brand is what gives it the brown color.

We take the brand off through what we call our milling machines, and that removes the brand of exposing the white starchy grain, which is what everyone's used to seeing.

The milling process also breaks up some of the rice.

So we take that rice and we send it through a series of sizes taking out all the broken kernels so that our customers get the full white grain, which is what you see in the bag.

That's what people eat.

We don't waste anything.

We sell all products.

We sell our broken grains, and we even sell the shell and the brand that we discussed earlier that is mixed in and sold as animal feed.

So after you get through the milling process, what happens after that?

Once all the rice is being placed in the storage bins, the clean rice storage vans, it can be packages out in a variety of ways.

You'll find Supreme rice anywhere from £1 bag on our store shelves up to a 15,000 ton shipload going overseas.

All right.

I really enjoyed that tour today.

Thank you so much for having us there.

Well, yeah.

So there's a saying that if you haven't eaten rice today, have you really eaten at all?

And I think that's true.

A lot of Louisianans, have you eaten rice to cause me to.

And we definitely want to thank Dr. Carl Mattson, Baker, Crystal, Bessie, Judy, my hand and everyone at the LSU AG Center for just wonderful information that we get to share with our audience here.

They'll be such a beautifully produced and filmed and just well done program.

LP And this is why we need your assistance to keep programs such as this one on air.

And one more shout out to DeRay Washington and his digital team at LP, putting these segments together.

Once again, these segments go into the classroom, they educate the young, but as we're finding out, it isn't just a classroom bit of information that we can share and we share our story of Louisiana and our heritage and yeah, by the way, how this food got to your plate.

That's all pretty important stuff.

We're now learning about rice and where it originated from and and, you know, originating in China and harvested in West Africa.

And of course, we use rice for so many of our foods, our gumbo and our face and our food.

And so it's the stable.

And having worked in agriculture a few years ago, what I have learned over the years, Charlie, is that our farmers are stewards of the land.

So we really do have some of the best agricultural products there are because they do take such care of the land.

And and we have some of the best food in the world.

And Louisiana is an agricultural state.

People don't realize that.

They think of the tourism and all the fabulous places to come, New Orleans and and all the things to do and see in that world, oil and gas state.

But we're an agricultural state as well without a doubt.

Our farmers are front line heroes every day and they are doing their business and being heroes in plain sight.

Right.

But when you just pass them, say, on on a road, on an interstate and you say, there's a big field, what is that like?

Time, A lot of work.

The city slipped it and they may not know.

But if you talk to the farmer, if you talk to the folks from those communities in rural Louisiana, they certainly will tell you about the great works that go on.

And we at OPB want to share that we're collaborating with LSU's AG Center to make sure that we can tell that story, that important story of Louisiana.

We also want to thank the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation and the Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Public Health for helping have this show on the air and a couple of more folks that are part of this process.

The Louisiana Department of Education and the USDA, as well as the LSU AG Center.

So this entire Louisiana Harvest of the Month playlist can be viewed on LP's YouTube channel and at LP Dawgs YouTube.

We're going digital, everybody.

It's the new thing.

Go ahead.

We got some.

Thank you, girls.

You're going to enjoy to support stories about Louisiana on LP For $15 a month, you will receive the Louisiana Harvest of the Month combo that includes the seven piece stainless steel garden tool set, including a large and small trowel cultivator, handbrake, wheater, pruning shears and an Oxford cloth tote to keep all your tools neatly stored.

The fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round hardcover cookbook by Helena Bridgeman and an LP be outdoor picnic blanket support LP at $10 a month to receive the fresh table cooking in Louisiana all year round Cookbook over 100 recipes of Louisiana's favorite cuisine that reflect our state's year round growing seasons published by LSU Press.

Or for just $7 a month.

We will send you the LP outdoor blanket for springtime picnics at the park.

The Louisiana Harvest of the Month program showcases a different Louisiana grown food each month in Louisiana communities.

We hope you will join us in Tasting Louisiana this month.

Support provided by the Louisiana AG in the Classroom program, giving educators the tools to increase understanding of agriculture and renewable food, fiber and fuel systems.

Learn more at 80 Clay Dawg and by the Louisiana Department of Health working to improve disparities in health care and health outcomes.

Information at LDH dot L.A. dot Gov.