The busy season has returned to Arkansas County, where fields planted in the spring are golden yellow as the county's staple crop -- rice -- is ready for harvest.
Harvesters roll through the fields that line Arkansas 165. At the Producers Rice Mill in DeWitt, trucks are ready to unload their bounty.
Elsewhere, rows of corn and sorghum are also being harvested. Soybean fields are getting close to their turn.
The crops are coming in, and there's work for those who want it, County Judge Thomas "Eddie" Best said.
"We know what it is to break a sweat," he said. "I'm talking being out there and sweating head to toe."
The county judge's words are echoed by other residents and reinforced by the county's unemployment rate.
In July, the most recent month for which data were available, the preliminary unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in Arkansas County, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The county's unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in April, May and June.
Arkansas County's July rate ranked seventh statewide, behind Washington at 4.1 percent, Benton and Madison at 4.4 percent, Carroll at 4.5 percent, Saline at 4.6 percent and Lonoke at 4.7 percent.
The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.6 percent in July, according to preliminary numbers.
Arkansas County has come a long way from five years ago, when its 2010 unemployment rate was 18.6 percent.
A specific reason for the county's unemployment-rate turnaround can't be singled out, officials said. But "agriculture is it in the county," Best said.
The rice industry powers the county's economic engine. Riceland Foods and Producers Rice Mill, along with other rice producers and connected companies, are the major employers in the county.
"We're on an island," DeWitt Mayor Ralph Relyea said. "Our economy, our farm economy has traditionally been based on rice, which is a worldwide commodity. There's always a market for it.
"We have a strange soil here that grows rice better than anywhere else in the world. I'm going to give that a lot of credit, even though we don't grow as much rice as we used to grow."
Lennox Industries, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning company in Stuttgart, is another big employer of county residents.
Bethany Hildebrand, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce, said the county's unemployment rate is closely tied to Lennox Industries, Riceland Foods and Producers Rice Mill.
"That makes our area kind of unique," she said. "Those industries have such a huge impact on what happens here from month to month. If something happens to any of those, it can throw the numbers off. Those industries can swing the numbers heavily. That's just the way it happens in our area with our population being small."
Knowing where Arkansas County was five years ago, its people are determined to make sure it won't become another statistic, said Michael Layman, plant manager at Industrial Iron Works in DeWitt, which manufactures Adams Fertilizer Equipment.
"You can drive any direction out of this town, and I can show you statistics of a town that didn't make it, that didn't have the drive or determination to be successful," he said. "We want this place to do better and prosper, to be something to be proud of."
Layman said his plant, which employs about 300, is always looking for good workers. The company utilizes in-house training and works with the DeWitt campus of Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas to teach workers new skills.
"A lot of companies use technology, and they say, 'We don't need as many employees because this machine does the work of three men,'" he said. "We don't look at it that way. We say, 'This machine will build more parts so we can build more equipment. We need more people.' We believe in people. We believe in hard work."
The bottom for Arkansas County was in January 2010, when the county's unemployment rate was 20.4 percent -- meaning approximately 2,275 people out of a labor force of 11,150 were unemployed.
A lot of factors fueled the unemployment-rate rise, Best said. The county took longer to shake off the effects of the recession.
In late 2008 and early 2009, Lennox Industries laid off about 400 workers from its plant in Stuttgart, making the county's unemployment rate go up.
But the county's economic fortunes are largely bound to its agricultural fortunes, which go up and down.
A rice farmer for 52 years, 74-year-old Gary Sebree this year planted 600 acres of rice and 900 acres of soybeans southeast of Stuttgart near Almyra. He calls farming a "roller coaster ride."
"You have a tendency after you have three or four years of good prices and good crops to think that's the way it's going to be," said Sebree, former chairman of the board of directors for Producers Rice Mill.
"Unfortunately, it's not, and it goes down. Then you get on the defensive after you have a bad couple of years. But you hang on and learn things."
Sebree said that some "phenomenal" rice prices in the past few years helped the county recover from its downturn, but "unfortunately, they are going back down to kind of even things out."
As the national economy has improved, Lennox has added workers and increased its production, which has fueled an uptick in the county's economic fortunes, too. Lennox employs about 1,400 people, Hildebrand said.
And the growth of Lennox has led to an increase in offshoot businesses.
"There are things that have formed off of Lennox growing and being what it is now," Hildebrand said.
The county's unemployment rate has also benefited from a shrinking labor force. The labor force in Arkansas County in July was approximately 9,800 -- down from an average of 12,300 workers in 2009.
There were approximately 19,000 people living in the county in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An estimated 18,600 lived in Arkansas County in 2014, a 2.1 percent drop in the county's population.
Best said population loss is a challenge and that drawing new residents to the county is a way to keep the local economy rolling.
"My goal, as long as I'm county judge, is to try to get people back in the county," he said. "To gain that population loss back. Which is going to help the economy. Which is going to help the tax revenue. Which is going to help everything."
State Desk on 09/08/2015