By a unanimous vote, the Cape Girardeau County Commission has given approval to a 50% tax abatement over the next decade for a planned rice processing plant on 12 acres along the north side of Nash Road to the Diversion Channel levee and east of the Rhodes Truck Stop.

Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy on Monday said the request by Inland Cape Rice Company fits well into the county's enhanced-enterprise zone concept.

"(The EEZ) is one of the economic tools and incentives we have available to designate an area for tax abatement for 10 years," he said.

According to Missouri Department of Economic Development (DED), a new facility must create at least two new jobs with a minimum $100,000 new investment to be eligible for abatement consideration.

Sam Schneider of Cape Girardeau, a 2014 Southeast Missouri State University alumnus and 2010 Cape Girardeau Central graduate, founded Inland Cape Rice in 2019 and is a business partner in the venture with his father, Joe.

A field of rice on the Schneider Farm in McClure, Illnois, is seen in this undated photo.Submitted

The younger Schneider said he hopes to create as many as 11 new positions eventually in the 11,000-square-foot facility.

While he didn't want to disclose the exact amount of financial investment the company plans to make, Schneider indicated it is many times the minimum required by DED.

"We're always excited to see new companies coming into the area and this will generate economic activity," Tracy said, adding, "most people don't realize Missouri is a rice-producing state."

Schneider said the Bootheel is a fertile spot for rice because of the region's high moisture content and predilection for flooding.

"Primarily Cape Girardeau and on south, this corner of the world, sees quite a bit of rice grown," he said, noting nearby Arkansas is the U.S. leader in rice production. Missouri ranks fourth behind the Natural State, California and Louisiana.

"We're putting a plant in the northern end of rice country (and) the rice capital of the world is just a couple of hours to the south of us," Schneider noted.

History and planning

The father-and-son team began planting rice on the family farm in McClure, Illinois, years ago and a vision emerged to construct a plant to process the Schneider crop as well as those of other rice farmers in Southeast Missouri.

"We'll bring in the rough product from the farm (and) it will go through a series of cleaning processes — milling, whitening, polishing, sorting — before it reaches the packaging line. Some will go to retailers, including grocery stores, in one-pound and five-pound bags. We can do bigger bulk bags of 25-pound and 50-pound for food service, school lunch programs and restaurants, but we could go all the way up to full truckloads," Schneider said, with assortment decisions based on the customer base.

Schneider said the site preparation work on Nash Road is largely complete with design and engineering plans completed.

"We're just waiting now on our steel building to get here," he said, noting the COVID-19 pandemic and related supply-chain disruptions have delayed arrival of the structure until at least early next year.

The goal is for the plant to be in production by April.

"I'm fascinated with growing food for consumption and a staple in our home is rice -- which we eat with almost every meal," Schneider said.

More information about the company may be found at www.inlandcaperice.com.

Schneider, 29, is the paternal grandson of former longtime Cape Girardeau City Councilwoman Loretta Schneider, who died in 2017.