Rice Farming in the United States (NAICS 11116)

An investor's primer — rollup level. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 11116 is the industry group "Rice Farming." It contains exactly one child industry, 111160, and is effectively identical to it. This is a short overview; for full detail see the 111160 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS 11116 covers U.S. farms whose primary activity is growing rice (or producing rice seed), from land leveling through delivery of rough (unmilled) rice at the farm gate — before milling and packaging. Because the group has only one member, everything true of 111160 is true of 11116: a small, regional, water-dependent, capital-intensive corner of U.S. agriculture. Roughly 3,800 farms grow essentially all U.S. rice, clustered in a few states, on land that must be flooded and 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].

For an investor the takeaway is the same at both levels: rice is a commodity-cycle, water, and trade story, with no publicly traded U.S. rice-farming company. Public exposure is indirect (foreign branded-rice majors, farmland real-estate investment trusts, input suppliers); direct ownership of the asset is private.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS classifies from broad to narrow. At the 5-digit "industry group" level, 11116 is subdivided into 6-digit national industries — but rice farming has only one:

Because 111160 is the sole child, this level is a pass-through: 11116 and 111160 have the same farms, the same acreage, the same output, and the same economics. The extra digit adds no detail. The same milled/branded/wholesale steps that hold most of rice's investable scale sit downstream of both codes — rice milling (NAICS 311212), postharvest drying (115114), and grain wholesaling (424510) [1]. So the "rice industry" an investor pictures — brands, mills, exporters — lives one or two codes below this one.

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Because 11116 has one child, its rollup figures are simply the 111160 figures. Our ingested federal reference file for NAICS 11116 contains no stat_metrics — no aggregate employment, establishment, or revenue total — so none is invented here; the scale figures below are drawn from USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) crop data cited in the child primer.

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

Undercount caveat. Farm-level counts come from the USDA Census of Agriculture, not the standard business datasets: the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics both exclude crop production, so the usual "establishments / employees / receipts" tables effectively omit rice farming [19][20]. Ownership is also dominated by small and family operations — the 2022 Census classified 2,944 of 3,824 rice farms as family farms [5] — which magnifies the gap in any business-register view. Two further caveats carry up from the child: the 2022 Census acreage was depressed by drought (California fallowed roughly 300,000 acres), understating a more typical ~2.7–2.9-million-acre crop [2][29]; and the direction of travel is fewer, bigger farms.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With a single child, there is nothing to allocate across — all of the group's value sits in 111160, and none of it is a pure-play U.S. rice-farming stock. The routes are the same as for the child:

• Branded/marketing proxies (public, indirect): Ebro Foods (owns Riviana, the largest U.S. rice marketer) and Ricegrowers/SunRice are the closest listed proxies; LT Foods and KRBL add global rice exposure but little U.S.-farm content [26][27][28][29].
• Land (public): farmland REITs, chiefly Farmland Partners; Gladstone Land has limited rice [30].
• Picks-and-shovels (public): Deere, Nutrien, Corteva, CF Industries, FMC — equipment, seed, fertilizer, and crop chemicals sold into rice among many crops.
• The actual industry (private/cooperative): grower cooperatives — Riceland Foods (world's largest miller, ~$1.3B revenue), Producers Rice Mill, Farmers' Rice Cooperative — plus ~3,800 family and independent farms [22][23][24].

Tickers and how-to-invest mechanics are detailed in the child primer; this level adds no separate universe.

5. How the money works

Identical to the child. Farm economics are per-acre unit economics:

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

Price is bifurcated: Southern long-grain (~75% of output) is a global commodity, while California's premium medium-/short-grain japonica (sushi-grade) has fetched roughly $22/cwt and punches above its acreage in dollars [3][6]. Costs are high and rose fast — total rice production cost per acre climbed about 36% from 2012 to 2022, and rice is uniquely water- and energy-intensive because fields are flooded all season [21]. Margins are thin, cyclical, and shaped by federal support because rice carries a relatively high statutory reference price. Mills and branded-food companies earn different economics (milling yield, packaging, brand premiums) — retail rice sales are not farm revenue.

6. Demand drivers

Same as 111160: exports (40–45% of the crop) are the biggest swing factor, led by Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and WTO (World Trade Organization) minimum-access buyers Japan and South Korea [3][11]. Domestic staple consumption is steady but low-growth; the U.S. also imports substantial aromatic rice (jasmine, basmati), which exceeded 25% of the domestic market by 2022/23 [3]. Global supply shocks (India's 2023–24 export restrictions, then its 2025 return) and the U.S. dollar move prices for the export-dependent half of the business.

7. Regulation

Carries up unchanged from the child. Key touchpoints: USDA farm-program support (Price Loss Coverage / Agriculture Risk Coverage, marketing-assistance loans) via the Farm Service Agency [13]; federally subsidized crop insurance via the Risk Management Agency [14]; water — the binding constraint in California, where Sacramento Valley growers depend on Central Valley Project / State Water Project allocations and, longer term, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) [17]; Clean Water Act and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) pesticide rules [15][16]; the USDA National Organic Program for organic rice [18]; and trade policy (tariffs, WTO access, USMCA — the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement). Flooded paddies emit methane but also create carbon-credit and Pacific Flyway waterfowl-habitat revenue .

8. Consolidation

At the farm level, relentless consolidation: 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]. At the marketing level, concentration in cooperatives and a handful of private millers, led by Riceland Foods [22]. Future consolidation is more likely in milling, storage, and branded distribution than through any wave of publicly traded rice-farm companies.

9. Risks

The child's risk set applies in full: water and drought (existential for California, with SGMA tightening groundwater limits); input-cost inflation (fertilizer, diesel, irrigation energy); commodity-price cyclicality set by world balances the U.S. does not control; trade dependence (40–45% of revenue rides on exports); policy dependence on farm-bill support; working-capital and single-buyer counterparty risk; quality risk; succession and land tenure; and capital/land-value sensitivity to interest rates.

10. How to invest & outlook

How to invest is the same menu as the child, because this level is that child: public investors reach rice indirectly through downstream brands (Ebro/SunRice), farmland REITs (Farmland Partners), input suppliers (Deere, Nutrien, Corteva, CF Industries, FMC), or CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) rough-rice futures (ticker ZR) — noting there is no large dedicated rice ETF (exchange-traded fund). Private investors can own the asset directly — rice farmland, farmland platforms, operating partnerships, or agricultural private credit — underwriting water rights, pumping cost, yields, program participation, and mill/storage access.

Outlook. The cycle is turning on price and acreage. After weak 2025 prices cut crop value to about $2.4 billion, 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 — and USDA's July 2026 forecast calls for roughly 153 million cwt of 2026/27 production, a 39-year low, with the season-average farm price recovering to about $14.90/cwt on tighter supply [10][9]. India's return to world markets is a headwind; a higher rice reference price partly offsets it for grower income [9].

Bottom line: NAICS 11116 is a one-child pass-through for 111160. For anything beyond this summary — full economics, the complete investable-universe tables, and the how-to-invest checklist — read the 111160 primer.

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Sources

Drawn from the 111160 child primer (numbering preserved for cross-reference).

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual. https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
2. USDA NASS, Crop Production 2025 Summary (January 2026). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cropan26.pdf
3. USDA ERS, Rice Sector at a Glance (2025). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/rice/rice-sector-at-a-glance
4. USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Ch. 1, U.S. — Table 35 (2024). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_035_035.pdf
5. USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture: Farm Typology (2024). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Online_Resources/Typology/typology.pdf
6. USDA NASS, Crop Values 2024 Summary (February 2025). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cpvl0225.pdf
7. USDA NASS, Crop Values 2025 Summary (2026). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cpvl0226.pdf
8. USDA ERS, U.S. Rice Production Changed Significantly in the New Millennium but Remained Profitable (Amber Waves, May 2020). https://ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/may/u-s-rice-production-changed-significantly-in-the-new-millennium-but-remained-profitable
9. USDA ERS, Rice Outlook / Market Outlook (2026). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/rice/market-outlook
10. USDA NASS, Acreage (June 2026). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/acrg0626.pdf
11. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Rice Exports in 2024. https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/rice
12. USDA Farm Service Agency, Rice Program / ARC & PLC. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/programs/rice-program
13. USDA Risk Management Agency, Insurance Plans. https://www.rma.usda.gov/about-crop-insurance/managing-farm-risk/insurance-plans
14. U.S. EPA, Clean Water Act Section 404 and Agriculture. https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/clean-water-act-section-404-and-agriculture
15. U.S. EPA, Pesticide Permitting (NPDES). https://www.epa.gov/npdes/pesticide-permitting
16. California Department of Water Resources, Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/SGMA-Groundwater-Management
17. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, National Organic Program. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program
18. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (excludes crop production). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
19. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics (excludes crop production). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics.html
20. USDA ERS, Recent Rice and Fertilizer Price Surges Affected U.S. Rice Farming Profitability (2024). https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/108191
21. Riceland Foods, About Riceland. https://www.riceland.com/about-riceland
22. Producers Rice Mill, About. https://producersrice.com/about/
23. Farmers' Rice Cooperative, About Us. https://www.farmersrice.com/about-us/
24. Riviana Foods (an Ebro Foods company), About Us. https://riviana.com/about-us/
25. LT Foods, About Us. https://ltf.ltfoods.com/about-us
26. Ricegrowers Limited / SunRice, ASX investor materials (SGLLV). https://www.sunrice.com.au/investors/
27. KRBL Limited, Investor Relations. https://krblrice.com/investor-relations/
28. Farmland REIT portfolios — Farmland Partners (FPI) and Gladstone Land (LAND) company filings. https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/real-estate-investing/reit/farmland-reits/
29. Ambrook / Offrange, After a crippling drought, California has enough water to grow rice this year (2023). https://ambrook.com/offrange/sustainability/california-rice-water-scarcity-sacramento-valley
30. 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