Last Friday a courtroom in Little Rock revealed an international criminal attempt, the likes of which belong in a Hollywood spy movie--if rice and agriculture were deemed sexy enough by California movie producers.
The papers say two Chinese men have been indicted for an attempt to steal rice production technology from us. The nerve! Arkansas is the No. 1 rice exporter in the country, and a good chunk of it already goes to China. Authorities say the two were caught in Hawaii heading back home with stolen rice seeds. The public prints have more:
"The seeds were developed by Ventria Bioscience, a company based in Colorado with a rice production facility in Kansas. They said the company used technology to create rice seeds that contained certain proteins, which could then be removed from the rice and used in medicine and pharmaceutical products."
Some of those stolen seeds came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in our own Stuttgart.
The papers have been so full of Russian spies that it's kind of surprising to see Chinese spies get busted for something like rice hustling. Thankfully, the FBI was on the case.
We think this marks a great opportunity for the sixth Mission Impossible film. Tom Cruise is no stranger to Arkansas, either. He filmed some scenes for The Firm over in the eastern part of our state back in 1993 (a movie that was based on the novel of the same name by our own John Grisham). We'd love to have him back, and we'll even overlook the fact that American Made was partially about an airport in Mena but filmed elsewhere. But to forgive is divine.
Editorial on 08/10/2018