Rice Farming in the United States (NAICS 111160)

An investor's primer. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 111160 covers U.S. farms whose primary activity is growing rice (or producing rice seed). The activity ends at the farm gate — before milling and packaging.

1. Overview

Rice farming is a small, regional, water-dependent, capital-intensive corner of U.S. agriculture. Roughly 3,800 farms grow essentially all of it, clustered in a handful of states, on land that must be flooded and precisely laser-leveled [4]. The crop was worth about $3.4 billion at the farm gate in 2024 and roughly $2.4 billion in 2025 as prices fell [6][7]. The United States grows less than 2% of the world's rice but is a top-five exporter with about 5% of global rice trade, shipping 40–45% of each crop abroad [3].

Why it matters to an investor: rice is a classic commodity-cycle business. Growers earn the spread between yield and price, minus heavy input and water costs, cushioned by federal farm programs. It is also a water story — California's premium medium-grain crop lives and dies on Sacramento Valley water allocations — and a trade story, because nearly half the crop depends on export demand.

Ways in differ sharply by investor type. There is no publicly traded U.S. rice-farming company — the farms are private, mostly family operations, and milling and marketing are dominated by grower cooperatives. Public-market investors reach the industry indirectly: through foreign-listed branded-rice majors, farmland real-estate investment trusts (REITs — companies that own income-producing land and must pay out most earnings as dividends), and the input suppliers that sell to growers. Private investors can own the actual asset — rice farmland — directly or through farmland platforms, operating partnerships, or agricultural private-credit deals.

2. What it is and how it's structured

NAICS 111160 is the farm itself: land leveling, seeding, fertilizing, flooding and draining, harvesting, and delivering rough (unmilled) rice — plus rice-seed production. Southern states grow mostly long-grain rice; California specializes in premium medium- and short-grain (japonica) varieties [3].

The code excludes the steps that create most of rice's investable scale:

• Rice milling (cleaning, hulling, polishing rough rice into white/brown rice) — NAICS 311212, Rice Milling [1].
• Wild rice (an unrelated aquatic grass) and mixed grain/oilseed operations — NAICS 111199 and 111191 [1].
• Rice drying and other postharvest services — NAICS 115114 [1].
• Grain wholesaling/marketing — 424510; retail branded rice flows through packaged-food companies.

So the "rice industry" an investor pictures — brands, mills, exporters — mostly lives one or two NAICS codes downstream of 111160. The farm code is the raw-commodity layer.

Ownership mix. Production is overwhelmingly private and fragmented by legal title, even though acreage is concentrated among larger operators. The 2022 Census of Agriculture classified 2,944 of the 3,824 rice farms as family farms and 880 as nonfamily, with family farms operating about 75% of listed rice acreage [5]. ("Family farm" is an ownership category, not necessarily a simple sole proprietorship — many are partnerships or LLCs, limited-liability companies.) Milling and marketing are unusually cooperative-owned: grower co-ops — farmers who jointly own the mill that processes and sells their rice — handle a large share of the crop. The largest, Riceland Foods, calls itself the world's biggest rice miller and marketer, with about 5,500 farmer-members and roughly $1.3 billion in revenue [22]. Producers Rice Mill (more than 2,500 members, four mills) and California's Farmers' Rice Cooperative (500-plus grower-members) are other major grower-owned marketers [23][24]. Private millers and branded platforms (Supreme Rice, Kennedy Rice, ADM Rice, and organic-focused Lundberg Family Farms) round out the chain [25].

3. How big it is

Farm-level figures come from the USDA Census of Agriculture and crop reports, not the standard business datasets — an important caveat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) statistics agencies count this industry; the U.S. Census Bureau's business programs largely do not. County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics both exclude crop production, so the usual "establishments / employees / receipts" business tables effectively omit rice farming [19][20]. For rice the gap is mostly small and nonemployer farm operations, not government ownership.

Our ingested federal reference gives one directly comparable business figure: the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) small-business size standard for rice farming is $2.5 million in average annual receipts [12]. That is a program-eligibility threshold, not an estimate of industry revenue — a large multi-thousand-acre operation can exceed it, though most farms fall under it. Our stats file contains no aggregate federal employment, establishment, or revenue total for the industry, so none is invented here; the scale figures below come from USDA crop data.

(cwt = hundredweight = 100 pounds, the standard rice unit. NASS = National Agricultural Statistics Service; ERS = Economic Research Service — both USDA agencies.)

Two caveats. First, the 2022 Census acreage (2.28 million) was depressed by drought — California fallowed roughly 300,000 acres that year — so it understates a more typical ~2.7–2.9-million-acre crop [2][31]. Second, the direction is unmistakable: fewer, bigger farms (see Section 8). Arkansas is the dominant state, roughly 45% of 2025 U.S. production [2].

4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play U.S. rice-farming stock. The public routes are all indirect proxies — processors, brands, land, and suppliers — not owners of most U.S. rice acreage. The direct owners are private.

Public companies (indirect exposure)

(OTC = over-the-counter U.S. market; BME = Madrid exchange; ASX = Australian exchange; NSE = National Stock Exchange of India.)

Private and cooperative owners (the actual industry)

• Grower cooperatives: Riceland Foods (~5,500 members, world's largest miller, ~$1.3B revenue) [22]; Producers Rice Mill (2,500-plus members, four mills) [23]; Farmers' Rice Cooperative (California, 500-plus members) [24].
• Private millers/branded platforms: Supreme Rice, Kennedy Rice, ADM Rice; Lundberg Family Farms (organic/regenerative) [25]; Mars, Inc. (private) — Ben's Original, the classic parboiled brand [32].
• ~3,800 family and independent farms — the growers themselves, not publicly investable. Cooperatives market and process members' crops but should not be assumed to own all the acreage they handle.

5. How the money works

Rice-farm economics are unit economics per acre:

Farm revenue ≈ harvested acres × yield (cwt/acre) × farm-gate price ($/cwt) + government-program or crop-insurance proceeds.

At a 2024 U.S. average of ~77.5 cwt/acre (7,748 lb) and a ~$15.40/cwt all-rice price, gross crop revenue ran very roughly $1,100–1,200 per acre before program support; the 2025 crop earned less as the all-rice price fell to about $12.10/cwt [1][2][7]. Key revenue variables are yield, price, grain quality, variety, delivery timing, and access to a mill or co-op.

Price is bifurcated by grain type. Long-grain rice (about 75% of output, grown in the South) is a global commodity. California's medium- and short-grain japonica — the sushi-grade crop — is a premium product that has fetched roughly $22/cwt, so California punches far above its acreage in dollar terms (on the order of several hundred million dollars of the national total on a fraction of the acres) [6]. Medium/short grain is about 25% of volume [3].

Costs are high and rose fast. USDA data show total rice-production cost per acre climbed about 36% from 2012 to 2022, with fertilizer rising especially sharply; USDA's 2026 forecast put rice fertilizer cost alone at roughly $182.60 per planted acre [21]. Rice is uniquely water- and energy-intensive: fields are flooded all season, and pumping/irrigation is a major line item, particularly where growers lift groundwater. Land, fuel, diesel, drying, storage, interest, and the capital cost of leveling, levees, and combines add up. Cash flow is seasonal — farmers spend heavily before harvest, then store rough rice and sell over time.

Margins are thin, cyclical, and policy-shaped. Net returns were positive in 8 of 10 years from 2009–2018, averaging about $131/acre in 2018, but several southern regions ran negative returns in 2015–2017 [8]. Economies of scale are real — which is exactly why farm count keeps shrinking while average size grows. Federal programs (see Section 7) are a structural part of rice income, not an occasional backstop, because rice carries a relatively high statutory reference price.

Mills and branded-food companies earn different economics — margins from milling yield, packaging, logistics, private-label contracts, and brand premiums. Retail rice sales should not be confused with farm revenue. For a public investor, the readable proxies are the branded/marketing layer (gross margin on packaged rice) and farmland rents (yield on the land) — not farm operating margin.

6. What drives demand

• Exports (40–45% of the crop). The single biggest swing factor. Top markets are Mexico (the largest, Southern long-grain), Central America, the Caribbean (Haiti), plus Japan and South Korea, which import U.S. rice under World Trade Organization (WTO) minimum-access rules, and the Middle East [3][11]. U.S. rice exports were about $2.42 billion in 2024 (a trade flow, distinct from farm-gate crop value) [11].
• Staple domestic consumption. Steady and slowly growing with population and cuisine diversity; rice also feeds processed foods, pet food, and beer (brewers use rice as an adjunct). The outlook is stable rather than high-growth.
• Imports. The U.S. also imports substantial rice, especially aromatic varieties (jasmine, basmati); imports exceeded 25% of the domestic market by 2022/23 [3].
• Specialty/premium varieties. California medium-/short-grain, organic, aromatic, and convenience formats earn premiums.
• Global supply shocks. India's rice-export restrictions in 2023–24 tightened world supply and lifted U.S. prices; India's return to the market in 2025 did the opposite.
• The dollar. A strong U.S. dollar makes U.S. rice pricier abroad and pressures the export-dependent half of the business.

Most earnings volatility comes from acreage, weather, trade, and prices — not from large swings in how much rice people eat.

7. Regulation

• Farm-program support. USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) administers Price Loss Coverage / Agriculture Risk Coverage (PLC/ARC) price and revenue support, plus marketing-assistance loans and loan-deficiency payments for the 2026–2031 crops [13]. Rice carries a relatively high statutory reference price, and recent farm legislation raised it, modestly increasing support [13][33].
• Crop insurance. USDA's Risk Management Agency (RMA) offers federally subsidized yield- and revenue-based rice policies — another structural income component [14].
• Water — the binding constraint in California. Sacramento Valley growers depend on Central Valley Project / State Water Project (CVP/SWP) allocations from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; zero-allocation drought years (2021–2022) fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres [31]. California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) adds a longer-run limit on pumping via local sustainability plans [17].
• Clean Water Act (CWA). Routine ongoing farming is generally exempt from some CWA Section 404 requirements, but converting wetlands or placing fill in protected waters can require authorization [15].
• Pesticides and food safety. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registers rice herbicides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA); certain pesticide discharges to protected waters may need National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits [16]. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees food safety, including periodic scrutiny of arsenic in rice.
• Organic. Farms selling rice as organic must comply with the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) [18].
• Climate/environment. Flooded paddies emit methane, drawing regulation but also creating carbon-credit and habitat revenue — California rice fields are critical Pacific Flyway waterfowl habitat, and growers can earn payments for methane-reduction and habitat practices [31].
• Trade policy. Tariffs, WTO access commitments, and USMCA (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) terms directly affect the export half of the industry.

The practical investment point: water rights, irrigation reliability, wetland status, and pesticide restrictions can determine whether acreage stays economically usable — not just compliance cost.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Two forces define the structure. At the farm level, relentless consolidation: the number of rice farms fell from about 9,600 in 1997 to 4,637 in 2017 to 3,824 in 2022 — roughly a 60% drop in 25 years — as scale economies pushed acreage into fewer, larger operations [4][8]. By 2022, 1,606 farms (about 42%) harvested at least 500 acres [5]. At the marketing level, concentration in cooperatives and a handful of private millers, with Riceland Foods the dominant miller [22].

Competitive advantage comes from productive, level land with dependable irrigation; large equipment fleets; low-cost access to drying, storage, rail, river, and export infrastructure; and strong relationships with co-ops, mills, and buyers. The U.S. does not compete on price with low-cost Asian exporters (India, Thailand, Vietnam) or South America — it competes on quality, food-safety reliability, and proximity to Western Hemisphere buyers, plus the specialized California japonica niche. The South (long-grain) and California (medium/short-grain) operate as almost separate businesses with different crops, cost structures, and buyers.

Judgment: future consolidation is more likely in milling, storage, branded distribution, and cooperative infrastructure than through a wave of publicly traded rice-farm companies. Grower cooperatives already provide aggregation and market access without public ownership.

9. Risks

• Water and drought — existential for California; groundwater limits (SGMA) tighten over time.
• Input-cost inflation — fertilizer, diesel, irrigation energy, labor, interest, and land rents can erase thin margins.
• Commodity-price cyclicality and global oversupply — prices are set by world balances the U.S. doesn't control (India, competing exporters, imports).
• Trade dependence — 40–45% of revenue rides on exports, exposed to tariffs, sanitary barriers, and the dollar.
• Policy dependence — a meaningful slice of grower income is federal support; farm-bill changes move the needle.
• Working-capital and counterparty risk — expenses are financed months before harvest; dependence on one co-op, mill, or buyer concentrates exposure.
• Quality risk — moisture, milling yield, broken kernels, or rejected loads reduce realized prices.
• Succession and land tenure — family ownership complicates transitions; rented acreage can be lost when leases reset.
• Climate, methane rules, and consumer perception — heat stress, water-rights curtailment, and periodic arsenic-in-rice headlines.
• Capital and land values — a land- and capital-heavy business sensitive to interest rates.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes (all indirect):

• Branded/marketing exposure: Ebro Foods (owns Riviana, the top U.S. rice marketer) and Ricegrowers/SunRice are the closest listed proxies for rice as a business; LT Foods and KRBL add global rice exposure but little U.S.-farm content [26][27][28][29].
• Land exposure: farmland REITs, chiefly Farmland Partners (row-crop land including rice); Gladstone Land skews to produce with less rice [30].
• Picks-and-shovels: input and equipment suppliers — Deere, Nutrien, Corteva, CF Industries, FMC — sell into rice among other crops.
• Direct commodity: CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) rough-rice futures (ticker ZR) give clean price exposure; note there is no large dedicated rice ETF (exchange-traded fund), and broad-agriculture ETFs hold little or no rice.

When sizing a listed proxy, weigh: rice vs non-rice revenue, brand vs private-label mix, volume- vs price-driven growth, raw-rice sourcing and pass-through ability, export-market and foreign-exchange concentration, and mill utilization/leverage.

Private routes (direct ownership of the asset):

• Buy or lease rice farmland, or invest through farmland platforms (e.g., AcreTrader, FarmTogether) and agriculture-focused funds that list row-crop/rice deals. Returns come from cash rent plus land appreciation — a farmland investment is not equivalent to owning a rice brand, and its operating income is only part of the total return.
• Private credit can offer contracted or asset-backed exposure, but repayment still depends on yields, commodity prices, insurance, and collateral liquidity. Underwrite water rights and pumping cost, ownership vs lease, historical yields, program participation, seasonal borrowing, mill/storage/drying access, equipment needs, and succession.
• Actual growers access the industry by joining a marketing cooperative.

Near-term outlook (forward-looking). The cycle is turning on price and acreage. After a large 2024 crop, weak prices in 2025 (all-rice ~$12.10/cwt) cut crop value to about $2.4 billion [7]. In response, growers are cutting acreage hard: USDA's June 2026 estimate put 2026 planted area at 2.017 million acres, down from 2.812 million in 2025 [10]. USDA's July 2026 forecast calls for roughly 153 million cwt of 2026/27 production — a 39-year low (the smallest crop since 1987) — with the season-average farm price recovering to about $14.90/cwt on tighter supply [9]. India's return to world export markets remains a headwind for global prices; the higher rice reference price is a partial offset for grower income [9][33].

Judgment: higher prices do not guarantee stronger farm profits if yields fall or fertilizer, fuel, water, and financing costs stay elevated. The strongest positions are likely water-secure, low-cost farms and well-capitalized processors with storage, differentiated brands, and diversified sourcing. Longer term, the swing variables to watch are California water availability (and SGMA), Western-Hemisphere export demand, input costs, and emerging carbon/habitat revenue. For public investors the practical takeaway stands: rice is best played through the downstream brands, the land, or the suppliers — not a farm ticker, because there isn't one.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Manual. https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
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17. California Department of Water Resources, Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/SGMA-Groundwater-Management
18. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, National Organic Program. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program
19. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (excludes crop production). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
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22. Riceland Foods, About Riceland; Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Riceland Foods. https://www.riceland.com/about-riceland
23. Producers Rice Mill, About. https://producersrice.com/about/
24. Farmers' Rice Cooperative, About Us. https://www.farmersrice.com/about-us/
25. Lundberg Family Farms, Our Story. https://www.lundberg.com/pages/our-story
26. Riviana Foods (an Ebro Foods company), About Us. https://riviana.com/about-us/
27. LT Foods, About Us; National Stock Exchange of India, LT Foods integrated filing. https://ltf.ltfoods.com/about-us
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31. Ambrook / Offrange, After a crippling drought, California has enough water to grow rice this year (2023); Capital Press, Zero water allocation… (2022). https://ambrook.com/offrange/sustainability/california-rice-water-scarcity-sacramento-valley
32. Wikipedia, Ben's Original (Mars, Inc. brand). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben%27s_Original
33. U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act — Section-by-Section (rice reference-price increase). https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rural_prosperity_and_food_security_section-by-section.pdf