Wisconsin Set for an Increase in This Year's Wild Rice Harvest

Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 -- 9:00 AM

(Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin Public Radio) Wisconsin is set for an increase this year in its wild rice harvest.

According to Danielle Kaeding with the Wisconsin Public Radio, wild rice, or manoomin in the Ojibwe language, is culturally significant to northern Wisconsin tribes. Tribal leaders and the state’s Wild Rice Stewardship Council gathered recently at the powwow grounds of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to kick off the first “Wild Rice Week” in Wisconsin.

Former Bad River Tribal Chair Mike Wiggins Jr. told the group the grounds are a sacred spot where tribal members send drumbeats down to the heart of Mother Earth to give thanks for wild rice. Wisconsin is set for an increase this year in its wild rice harvest.

“Manoomin, the food that grows on the water, it is the reason we’re here as Ojibwe in the Great Lakes,” Wiggins said. He relayed how the Council of the Three Fires, which represented the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi tribes, migrated to the Lake Superior region centuries ago in search of the place where “the food grows on water.”

The reservation is home to the Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs, which supports the largest natural wild rice bed in the Great Lakes basin. The more than 16,000-acre complex comprises more than half the coastal wetlands on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior.

Wiggins said it’s been a great year for harvesting wild rice on the reservation. “It’s been really awesome seeing a lot of our tribal members return with good harvests,” Wiggins said.

The wild rice crop has been better than average in the area, said Miles Falck, who supervises the manoomin team for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, or GLIFWC. “I think the lack of rain late in summer has contributed to lower water levels in northern Wisconsin, and so that’s benefiting rice,” Falck said.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has said heavy rainfall in April followed by drought has created stable conditions for the plant to grow. Wild rice is sensitive to any sudden increase in water levels when it’s in the floating leaf stage in early summer.

Other threats include shoreline development, pollution and climate change that’s driven more frequent intense storms, such as one that flooded the reservation in 2016.

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