Sebree and Wells Inducted into Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame

LITTLE ROCK, AR – Last Friday, at the 29th annual luncheon sponsored by the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, Gary Sebree and the late Dr. Bobby Wells were inducted into the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame.  

A third-generation rice farmer, Sebree farms approximately 2,000 acres of rice and soybeans near Stuttgart, Arkansas.  He was elected to the Producers Rice Mill board of directors in 1971 where he served for 43 years, the final 24 of those as chairman, from 1990 to 2014.  When Sebree assumed his leadership role at Producers, a farmer-owned cooperative, Arkansas rice acreage totaled 24 percent of the U.S. crop.  By the time he retired from the board in 2014, Arkansas was producing more than 50 percent of the entire U.S. crop, a distinction it still holds.

Sebree was chairman of USA Rice from 2002-2004 and recently received the Rice Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2016 USA Rice Outlook Conference.

Dr. Bobby Wells, former head of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Agronomy Department, was a world-renowned expert on rice production, with a special emphasis on rice nutrition and soil fertility.  He was principle developer of the nitrogen fertilizer application method known as the Arkansas three-way split application scheme, which has been found to be the most efficient method of fertilizing rice with nitrogen world-wide.  Wells was honored for his contributions of research, teaching, and service to the rice industry.