The harvest starts in mid-July at the western end and moves east, wrapping up in mid-September around Beaumont.

In Wharton County, at the belt's western end, harvest is winding down for L.G. and Linda Raun. For the past few weeks, they have been racing nature and the weather to cut rice that will end up on supermarket shelves across the country, in boxes, bags and frozen bowls labeled Uncle Ben's or Comet.

"Harvest time is what you live for out here," says L.G. Raun, smoothly guiding his new combine through a vast, flat rice field on the coastal prairie 17 miles east of El Campo. "It's just the best."

Once the Rauns' rice is hauled to the cooperative rice warehouse for drying, storage and sale, however, it is out of their hands. From there, it enters a corporate stream to be milled and processed with tons of other farmers' rice.

But there's one field still ripening in Wharton County whose rice has the Rauns' name on it -- literally.

In 1989, this third-generation rice farmer -- he goes by L.G., but his family calls him Lowell -- planted 30 acres of organic jasmine rice. He and his wife had no marketing plan; no experience in packaging, promoting or selling their own product. Fifteen years later, their Lowell Farms Organic Jasmine Rice is sold in stores in 30 states and has been lauded in cookbooks and national magazines.

The Rauns could never make a living with their specialty sideline alone, they emphasize, but they would feel less confident of making a living without it. They are among a growing number of people in the rice business who see specialty rice as one way to help keep the beleaguered rice farmer on the farm. Rice land

It's hard to ignore the fact that El Campo, where Lowell and Linda Raun have lived all their lives, is rice country. The tallest structures downtown are the rice dryers. The high school sports teams are named the Ricebirds. El Campo's county, Wharton, produces more rice than any other in Texas.

Rice farming moved into Wharton County in the early 1900s, spreading from Louisiana westward into Texas.

"They were looking for bigger fields, open country, good fresh water," Raun says.

The right climate and soil are not the only things rice requires. Indeed, Texas is one of only six states -- along with Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri -- where rice is farmed in this country. Rice needs flat land, to allow the fields to be flooded, and abundant fresh water. South of Wharton County, which lies 40 miles from Texas' Gulf Coast, the land is right, but the water is too salty, Raun points out.

Raun's grandfather George arrived in Wharton County shortly after rice did, in 1913. He came from Nebraska, planning to raise hogs and grow corn.

"But the hogs died of cholera and the crop failed," says Linda Raun, and in 1915 George Raun planted his first rice field. His three sons grew rice, too, and so did his grandsons. Brothers L.G. and Tim have an unusual partnership in which they farm 1,900 acres together -- sharing machinery and labor -- but own their land separately. The call of organic

After almost 30 years of rice farming, there's not much about the crop that L.G. doesn't know backward and forward. But 15 years ago, the Rauns were worried about something beyond their control: Rice prices seemed to be on a downward spiral.

"We knew we needed to diversify our operation," Linda Raun recalls. "We looked at wild rice; we tried row crops -- milo, corn, soybeans." None, though, did as well on their land as rice.

In 1988, they went to the West Coast on vacation. In Washington, "we started noticing that restaurants and everyone around were advertising organic products. We were sitting there at dinner in an organic restaurant, and we thought, 'Since we already know how to grow rice, maybe we could grow rice in a unique way.'

"The Texas Department of Agriculture had a fairly new organic-certification program, and so we researched what it would take.

"There was a new variety coming out -- Jasmine 85 -- and its growing characteristics were something that sounded good for organic: fast-growing, aggressive," she says.

"We knew we were going out against all the big guys; we knew we would have to have something very unique. The jasmine had more texture, more body, more flavor."

They agreed: L.G. would handle the growing; Linda would handle the packaging, marketing and distribution.

"In April or May 1989, we planted 30 acres. We didn't have a package; we didn't have anything. In July Lowell came home and said, 'You'd better get busy; we're going to have some rice out there.' "

Linda found a company in Houston to design Lowell Farms' teal-and-gold packages; she found a miller, Mike Doguet in Beaumont, who was certified to handle organic rice.

"Then I had to figure out how to sell it."

She started with local supermarkets in El Campo and Victoria -- "back then you could go to local buyers without having to go to corporate headquarters." The original Whole Foods in Austin was one of her early stores.

Working with the USA Rice Federation, she found distributors; she booked demonstrations at stores, food shows, wine and food festivals, clubs -- "anyone who wanted us." A program for the Sierra Club even led to a coalition with rice farmers and environmentalists and an agreement in which the Rauns agreed to keep a field flooded over the winter to provide waterfowl habitat.

The original 30 acres has grown to 50 farmed by the Rauns and 200 to 300 acres that two other farmers farm for them.

"The volume has grown like crazy," says Linda Raun. "The organic market is growing all the time." A demanding crop

Still, the Rauns know their specialty rice operation "is never going to be as large as for conventional rice.

"It's a small part of our overall operation, but it takes a lot of time," says Linda Raun.

No farm crop is cheap or easy to grow, but rice is particularly "management-intensive," as L.G. Raun describes it.

The water requirements of flood irrigation make rice farming a whole different ball game from other crops. Raun uses laser equipment and an earth mover to precision-level his fields to minimize the amount of water it takes to cover them, because water is a major expense.

Equipment is another: Raun and his brother just updated their combine fleet with a used 2001-model combine, at an outlay of around $180,000, "and we only run it six weeks out of the year."

Because the rice is flooded shortly after it's planted and remains under water until a couple of weeks before it's harvested, all fertilizers and pesticides must be applied from the air, another major expense. The Rauns maintain three airstrips near their fields.

And as management-intensive as regular rice is, organic rice is more so.

It can't be part of the regular rotation with conventional rice, because the field must have been free of insecticides, herbicides and pesticides for at least three years.

"The bottom line," says Linda Raun, "is with organic production you're going to have a yield reduction of one-third to one-half."

And harvesting and storage is not unlike keeping kosher: The harvesting equipment has to be cleaned beforehand, and the rice can't be mingled with other rice; it must be stored in separate bins dedicated to organic rice. There are inspections throughout the process to ensure that organic standards are adhered to. Diversifying the farm

So why go to the trouble?

One answer comes from Texas specialty-rice pioneer RiceTec, the Alvin-based developers of Texmati.

"Specialty rice, nationally, is the growth end of the rice business," says RiceTec's Richard Long, vice president of communication, planning and marketing.

Long noted that in 2003, when the low-carb trend and other factors knocked rice sales for a 5 percent drop in the United States, "the specialty-rice end was the only one that maintained any kind of growth."

Most specialty rice is contract-grown, Long noted, which means farmers are growing for a specific buyer at a guaranteed price.

He also notes that Texas rice farmers are competing with states like Arkansas, which leads the United States in rice production, and where land and water are much cheaper.

"What we've seen is that, for the rice business to survive in Texas, growers need to be taking a hard look at things that differentiate themselves in the marketplace and that give them a higher return."

Some rice farmers, for example, have begun using their flooded rice fields to raise crawfish to sell to stores and restaurants.

"It's like a portfolio you might have for your retirement," says Long. "They need to diversify their farm. Specialty and organic rice gives them a high-value crop they potentially can grow."

That's why a USDA team at the Texas A&M University System Research and Extension Station in Beaumont is working on new specialty rice varieties. A basmati-type cultivar called Sierra is being grown by Beaumont's Mike Doguet for sale to Arrowhead Mills, a pioneering organic company in Hereford. A waxy-rice variety called Neches may have a market as a replacement for wheat in making bread for people who can't tolerate wheat.

And the Beaumont team is working with Anson Mills in South Carolina to purify the seed stock of Carolina Gold, the first rice grown in this country, in the 1600s. "Anson Mills is interested in the authentic-historical-cuisine market," USDA's Anna McClung says. The taste test

Beyond these niche uses, RiceTec's Long notes that the market for specialty rices is becoming more and more mainstream.

"Trends grow out of ethnic markets and restaurants and flow through the marketplace into upscale stores, and eventually into mainstream America," he says. "Once upon a time Grey Poupon mustard was very fancy gourmet stuff imported from France; now you can probably buy it in any 7-Eleven."

Jasmine rice is "the biggest growth area for specialty rices," he says, "with basmati a very close second."

And Long points out that specialty rice, though it may cost several times what regular rice costs, "is still not expensive as part of the meal."

All you have to do to appreciate the quality is to cook up a pot of Lowell Farms' jasmine rice. The warm, nutty, buttered-popcorn aroma permeates your kitchen and fills your mouth upon your first bite of the soft, tender grains.

One suspects, in fact, that this is one of the reasons the Rauns keep growing this demanding crop, one of the reasons they keep returning calls from people in Arizona or Colorado eager to buy the rice that has their name on it.