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SW: →Rice Production: add info
[[File:dominionrice.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Rice growing at Dominion Farms. February 22, 2012.|Rice growing at Dominion Farms. February 22, 2012.]]To grow their rice, Dominion first tills the fields with a tractor to prepare for planting. The rice is direct seeded by a tractor (as opposed to traditional rice growing, in which rice is first planted in a seedbed and then transplanted after it begins to grow) and then the field is immediately flooded. After four to five days, the field is drained and the rice remains dry during a one month "hardening off" period. Employees weed rice fields by hand (although herbicide is also used) and fill in any gaps where rice did not germinate by transplanting rice seedlings. After one month, they flood the field once again and wait for the rice to mature after a total of 120 days. The rice is harvested by a combine. Sometimes after a field is harvested, the rice plants are left to produce a second crop, and sometimes the rice plants are tilled under so the field can be planted again. Fields may lay fallow after harvesting. Each field produces two to three crops per year, and Dominion is continually harvesting throughout the year in order to ensure that its mill always has rice to process.<ref name="Jill">Jill Richardson, Tour of Dominion Farms, February 22, 2012.</ref> Rice fields are 40 to 70 acres each, and about 10 fields might be harvested at any given time.
[[File:dominionrice.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Rice mill at Dominion Farms. February 22, 2012.|Rice mill at Dominion Farms. February 22, 2012.]]As the combine harvests, another large piece of equipment removes the rice and brings it to the mill, allowing the combine to continually harvest without stopping. At the mill, the rice is first dried, then it is processed. The mill first removes large and small impurities in the rice, and Dominion sells the small impurities as chicken feed. The husks are removed and used as mulch on Dominion's banana trees. The mill sorts out stones from the rice, and removes the bran and the germ, which are each sold as animal feed. The remaining white rice is polished, graded, and bagged.<ref name="Jill"/> They are sold under the brand name "Prime Harvest."
Because the rice is grown as a monoculture over a large area and because it is grown season after season without any crop rotation, Dominion must use large amounts of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. Dominion grows two rice varieties, referred to as 103 and 107, which provide high yields and mature quickly. High yielding lowland rice varieties tend to be dwarf varieties that are highly responsive to fertilizer, allowing them to grow lots of grain without causing the plant to topple over. Because these high yielding varieties are short, weeds must be controlled so they do not compete with the rice for sun. Dominion uses both a pre-emergent and a post-emergent herbicide, as well as hand weeding and flooding fields to control weeds.
