Oilseed and Grain Combination Farming (U.S.) — NAICS 111191

1. Overview

NAICS 111191 (North American Industry Classification System code 111191) covers farms that grow a combination of oilseeds and grains where no single crop or crop family supplies half the farm's crop-production value. In practice this is the signature business of the U.S. Corn Belt: the corn-and-soybean rotation farm that alternates the two crops field-by-field and year-by-year, often with some wheat in the mix.[1][2] It is the agricultural core of the Midwest — Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Indiana.

Why anyone allocating capital should care: grains and oilseeds are the raw material for the U.S. food, animal-feed, and biofuel systems. In 2022 U.S. farms sold $168.7 billion of grains and oilseeds — 31% of all U.S. farm sales, up 58% from 2017.[1] The crops these farms grow set feed costs for meat and dairy, feedstock costs for ethanol and renewable diesel, and a large share of U.S. agricultural exports.

The catch for public-market investors: you cannot buy a share of the typical farm. These are overwhelmingly private, family-held operating businesses.[1] So public investors reach this industry indirectly — through farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs), the seed/fertilizer/equipment suppliers that sell into it, the grain merchants and processors that buy its output, or commodity funds. Private investors reach it more directly — by owning farmland, leasing it to an operator, backing a farmland fund, or operating a farm. The economic profile is asset-heavy, seasonal, weather-sensitive, and exposed to commodity prices; the best operators combine productive land, disciplined input use, conservative borrowing, good crop marketing, and risk-management coverage. Sections 4 and 10 lay out both routes.

2. What it is and how it's structured

In scope: establishments growing a mix of oilseeds (soybeans, canola, sunflower) and grains (corn, wheat, sorghum) where no one crop or crop family is more than half of crop value. Farms may grow crops, produce seed, or both.[2] The classic case is a roughly 50/50 corn–soybean operation.

What a typical operator does: picks a crop rotation balancing oilseeds and grains; buys seed, fertilizer, crop-protection products, fuel, and custom services; plants, monitors, and harvests; then dries, stores, transports, and sells output through elevators, processors, exporters, or cooperatives. The operator owns some land and machinery but may cash-rent land or outsource planting, harvesting, and post-harvest work.

What it excludes — adjacent NAICS codes catch the single-crop specialists and the up/downstream trades:

• 111110 Soybean farming and 111120 Oilseed (except soybean) farming — where one oilseed dominates.
• 111140 Wheat, 111150 Corn, 111160 Rice, 111130 Dry pea and bean, 111199 All other grain farming — where one grain dominates.[2]
• NAICS 115 support activities for crop production (custom planting, spraying, harvesting, farm management for hire); 424510 grain and field-bean merchant wholesalers/elevators; and 311224 soybean and other oilseed processing (crushing) sit up- and downstream — not here.[2]

The line between 111191 and its single-crop neighbors is a 50% revenue test, not the crop list. A farm that grows corn and soybeans but tips past 50% corn is coded 111150; keep it balanced and it is 111191. That makes 111191 fundamentally a rotation business.

Ownership mix: fragmented at the farm level, more concentrated in output and downstream infrastructure. USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) reports family farms were about 97% of all U.S. farms in 2024, and for cash grains and soybeans specifically, large-scale family farms accounted for 51% of production value in 2022.[1] The likely 111191 structure is a mix of family farms, partnerships, LLCs, corporations, nonoperator landlords, and farmer-owned cooperatives. Roughly a quarter of the land these operators farm is rented rather than owned, so cash rent is one of their largest costs.[1]

3. How big it is

Federal business statistics barely see this industry, and where they do they undercount it. USDA's five-year Census of Agriculture is the authoritative source; the conventional business datasets are built to exclude farms:

• County Business Patterns (CBP) excludes crop production, agricultural-production employees, and the self-employed.[5]
• Census Nonemployer Statistics excludes all of NAICS 111, including crop production.[5]
• The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) excludes proprietors, unincorporated self-employed workers, unpaid family members, and many farm workers.[5]

So a low business-statistics count would not prove the underlying farm economy is small — it reflects who these surveys are designed to skip.

From the 2022 Census of Agriculture (figures below are for the specialized grain-and-oilseed group, NAICS 1111 — the pool 111191 is drawn from, not a 111191-only cell):[1]

• 422,851 farms produced and sold grains and oilseeds, generating $168.7 billion in sales (31% of all U.S. farm sales), up 58% since 2017.
• 330,930 farms specialized in grain and oilseed farming (more than half of sales from these crops). Of those, 253,599 specialized in corn or soybeans — the pool that NAICS 111191 is drawn from — and 77,331 in wheat, sorghum, rice, dry beans, dry peas, and other grains.[1]
• These specialized farms are 17% of all U.S. farms but work 32% of all agricultural land and 69% of harvested cropland; among farms harvesting 1,000+ acres, 76% are grain or oilseed farms.[1]
• Harvested acres by crop in 2022: corn 86.6 million, soybeans 84.6 million, wheat 37.2 million.[1]

A caveat on the 111191 number specifically: our ingested federal ground-truth file for NAICS 111191 contains only the SBA size standard (below), not a Census farm count. The Census reports the combination code as one cell inside the 253,599 corn-or-soybean specialists, and we do not have that exact cell in hand, so we report the group figures honestly rather than invent a 111191-only total. The takeaway is unchanged: the corn–soybean rotation farm is one of the largest single categories in American agriculture.

Size and small-business context. The average specialized grain-and-oilseed farm ran 845 acres, with $495,090 in sales and $171,880 in net cash farm income in 2022 — well above the all-farm averages of 463 acres and $79,790.[1] Yet these are still small businesses by federal definition: the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for NAICS 111191 is $2.25 million in average annual receipts (effective March 17, 2023) — a government-contracting eligibility threshold, not a measure of total industry revenue.[4] Only 14% of grain-and-oilseed farms had sales plus government payments above $1 million, so the vast majority qualify as small businesses.[1]

4. The investable universe

There is no pure public "grain farm" stock — no major U.S. public company is a pure-play NAICS 111191 operator, because the farms themselves are private and family-held.[1] Public investors buy the ecosystem around them; the cleanest direct claim on the land is a farmland REIT. Tickers and scale below are for identification, not recommendations.

Commodity fund routes (own the price move, not a company): Teucrium Corn (CORN), Teucrium Soybean (SOYB), Teucrium Wheat (WEAT); Invesco DB Agriculture (DBA); and the agribusiness equity basket VanEck Agribusiness (MOO).[8]

Major private and "other" owners (they generally buy from growers rather than own the farm operation):[15]

• Operating farms — the growers themselves, overwhelmingly family-owned and privately held.[1]
• Cargill — the largest U.S. grain merchant, a private family company with integrated sourcing, storage, trading, and processing.
• CHS Inc. — the largest farmer-owned cooperative, in grain/oilseed marketing, crop inputs, processing, and energy.
• Scoular and Louis Dreyfus Company — private grain merchants/processors with global grains-and-oilseeds platforms.
• Institutional farmland managers — Nuveen Natural Capital and Manulife Investment Management hold large U.S. row-crop portfolios, typically leased to farming tenants.
• Retail farmland platforms — AcreTrader and FarmTogether let accredited investors buy fractional interests in specific fields. Direct farmland ownership — buying acres and cash-renting them to a farmer — is the oldest private route of all.

5. How the money works

A grain-and-oilseed farm is a price-taker commodity producer: it sells bushels at a market price it does not control, so profit is a thin spread between yield-times-price and cost-per-acre. The core equation is:

crop revenue = acres × yield per acre × realized price

where the realized price depends on the local cash price, the futures price, basis (the local-vs-futures gap), quality discounts, freight, storage timing, and marketing decisions. The metrics that matter are yield per acre, cost per bushel, revenue and cash rent per acre, operating margin, working-capital adequacy, and debt-service coverage — not capacity utilization or anything resembling a retail margin.

Revenue per acre = yield (bushels/acre) × price ($/bushel). USDA's 2026 forecasts put the season-average farm price near $4.20 per bushel for corn and roughly $10.40–$11.40 for soybeans.[7] A Corn Belt corn field yielding ~200 bushels grosses roughly $840/acre; a 60-bushel soybean field near $660–$680/acre — before costs.

Cost per acre is dominated by a handful of inputs. Across specialized grain-and-oilseed farms in 2022, production costs totaled $119.0 billion, split as: fertilizer $23.2B (19%, the single biggest line), land rent $17.2B, seeds $16.0B, chemicals $14.1B, supplies/repairs $9.1B, fuel $7.1B, hired labor $6.1B, and other $26.2B.[1]

The margin is currently thin to negative. The American Soybean Association (ASA) projected soybean growers would lose about $89 per planted acre on the 2025 crop at market prices — a third straight year of market losses.[17] Purdue's crop budgets show 2025 breakevens running roughly $4.90–$5.60 per bushel for corn and $11.59–$13.20 for soybeans depending on soil quality — at or above the prices the market is paying.[16] When the crop loses money at the elevator, the farm's income depends on the two federal backstops below.

Government payments and crop insurance fill the gap. Specialized grain/oilseed farms averaged $28,964 in government payments in 2022.[1] Two commodity-title programs — Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) — pay out when county revenue or prices fall below set levels; total ARC/PLC payments for the 2025 crop are projected around $5.4 billion.[20] Subsidized federal crop insurance — chiefly Revenue Protection, which covers both yield and price-driven revenue shortfalls — covers most planted acres.[20] These backstops reduce downside risk but do not turn an inefficient farm into a profitable one; they are why 76% of these farms still posted positive net income in a weak year.[1]

Landowner vs. operator. Two different returns hide inside "the industry." The operator earns the farming margin above. The landowner earns cash rent — averaging about $161 per cropland acre in 2025 (non-irrigated ~$147)[19] — plus land appreciation. Because roughly a quarter of farmed land is rented, rent is simultaneously a top cost for operators and the core yield for farmland REITs and private landowners. That split is central to how public investors (mostly landowners, via REITs) and farm operators experience the same industry very differently.

6. What drives demand

Grain-and-oilseed demand runs through four channels:

• Animal feed — the largest single use. Corn is the dominant U.S. feed grain and soybean meal the major protein source; demand tracks cattle, hog, poultry, dairy, and aquaculture production.[1]
• Food and ingredients — grains supply flour, starch, sweeteners, and cereals; oilseeds supply vegetable oils and protein meals for food, feed, and industrial uses.[3]
• Biofuel — ethanol consumes about 5.5 billion bushels of corn (~43% of the U.S. corn crop), and roughly 13.9 billion pounds of soybean oil (~45% of use) goes into biodiesel and renewable diesel.[21] The federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a direct demand lever: EPA set record biomass-based-diesel volumes for 2026–2027, which pulls on soybean oil.[21]
• Exports — the U.S. supplies about 26% of world soybean trade (down from over 70% in the 1970s), and China is the swing buyer.[3] Export demand is the most volatile channel and the most exposed to trade policy (Sections 7 and 9).

Underlying long-run growth comes from global population, rising protein consumption, biofuel mandates, and yield-raising productivity (better genetics, crop protection, precision equipment, and data — the benefit of which accrues first to efficient operators and their suppliers). Near-term demand is set by livestock margins, biofuel policy, and export competition from Brazil and Argentina.

7. Regulation

Farming is lightly regulated as a business but heavily shaped by federal farm and environmental policy:

• The Farm Bill sets the commodity safety net (ARC and PLC), crop insurance, and conservation programs on a multi-year cycle. The current framework runs on an extension plus provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which set 2025 ARC/PLC terms and continued the programs through 2031. PLC reference prices — the floors below which support kicks in — are $4.26/bushel for corn and $9.66 for soybeans.[20]
• Federal crop insurance — USDA's Risk Management Agency (RMA) runs the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC); private insurers sell and service subsidized policies. It is the largest single farm-support mechanism.[20]
• Biofuel policy — the EPA's RFS mandates biofuel volumes, directly steering corn and soybean-oil demand.[21]
• Pesticides — the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) governs registration and use; EPA labels are legally enforceable, and off-label use is unlawful.[24]
• Conservation — the highly-erodible-land and wetland "conservation compliance" rules condition most USDA benefits, and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) pays to idle environmentally sensitive acres. Compliance is tied to program eligibility; 94% of these farms already use reduced- or no-till.[1][24]
• Grain quality — the U.S. Grain Standards Act (USGSA), administered by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, sets official standards for corn, wheat, soybeans, canola, sorghum, sunflower seed, and more.[24]
• Foreign land ownership — the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) requires foreign holders of reportable U.S. farmland interests to disclose them to USDA; several states add their own restrictions.[24]
• Trade policy — tariffs and trade agreements move export demand sharply (Section 9). State and local rules on water rights, corporate-farming, zoning, labor, and property taxes vary widely.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is a fragmented industry consolidating steadily. No farm has pricing power over bushels, so the competitive game is cost per acre and scale, fought locally over land, tenants, labor, machinery, financing, and elevator access. The land is slowly moving into fewer, bigger hands: the midpoint corn farm — the size at which half of corn acres are on bigger farms and half on smaller — grew from 200 acres in 1987 to 685 acres in 2017, and large farms' share of all cropland rose from 15% to 41% over that span.[22] Soybeans, wheat, and other row crops show the same pattern.[22]

Drivers of consolidation: machinery and technology favor scale, older operators exit (average age ~58)[1], and neighbors with the lowest cost per acre can outbid others for rented ground. Rising land values reinforce it — U.S. cropland averaged $5,830 per acre in 2025, a record, up 4.7% year over year even as crop prices fell.[19] High land values raise the entry barrier for new farmers and reward incumbents who already own acres.

The suppliers and buyers, by contrast, are highly concentrated. A handful of firms dominate seed and crop chemicals (the top four control ~56% of seeds)[9] and grain trading/processing (ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus). Bunge's Viterra combination is a live example of ongoing downstream consolidation.[12] Farmers thus buy inputs from concentrated sellers and sell bushels to concentrated buyers, which pressures the middle — the farm — from both ends. Note that consolidation of market channels is not the same as consolidation of farm ownership: merchants and processors may control the pipes without owning the farms, and institutional landlords may own the land without controlling crop production.

9. Risks

• Price/margin cyclicality. Crop prices swing with global supply and demand; a large harvest can depress prices even when an individual farm yields well. 2023–2025 delivered three straight years of market losses on soybeans.[17] Thin or negative operating margins are the base case.
• Input-cost squeeze. Fertilizer (19% of costs), fuel, seed, rent, and interest can rise faster than crop prices, compressing margins from the cost side.[1]
• Trade/export shocks. China is the pivotal soybean buyer. In 2025 U.S. soybean exports to China collapsed to roughly 218 million bushels from nearly a billion the prior year during a tariff standoff; a November 2025 deal restored purchases (~25 million metric tons/year through 2028) but U.S. beans still carry a 13% Chinese import duty.[23] Trade policy is a recurring tail risk.
• Basis and logistics risk. A farm can grow a strong crop but receive a weak local price because of elevator congestion, freight costs, storage limits, or quality discounts.
• Weather and biology. Drought, flood, heat, frost, pests, and disease can wipe out a season; crop insurance softens but does not eliminate the hit.
• Leverage and liquidity. Land and machinery are expensive and cash flow is seasonal; rising rates or margin calls can force sales at poor prices. High rates also raise operating-loan and land-purchase costs and can cool the record land values that underpin farm balance sheets and farmland-REIT valuations.[19]
• Policy risk. The farm safety net, crop-insurance subsidies, RFS biofuel mandates, pesticide registrations, and conservation rules are periodically renegotiated; a weaker safety net or lower biofuel targets would cut income and demand.
• Succession and illiquidity. Many private farms hinge on a few owners or family members, and farmland and private farm interests can take substantial time to buy or sell, with appraisal, tax, and financing complexity.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes. Since the farm itself is not investable, public exposure comes in four flavors, each with a different risk profile — match the security to the exposure:

1. Farmland REITs (Farmland Partners, FPI; Gladstone Land, LAND) — own the land, collect cash rent, ride land appreciation. Closest to a landowner's return; driven by rent per acre, tenant quality, interest rates, and net asset value, not the farm operating margin.[6][7]
2. Input & equipment suppliers (Corteva CTVA, Nutrien NTR, Mosaic MOS, CF Industries CF; Deere DE, AGCO) — sell seed, fertilizer, chemicals, and machinery into planted acres; driven by farmer income, acreage, adoption, and the equipment replacement cycle.[8][9][10][14]
3. Grain merchants/processors (ADM, Bunge BG, The Andersons ANDE) — earn margins handling, crushing, and moving the crop; sensitive to crush margins, basis, and global flows, and often counter-cyclical to farm margins.[11][12][13]
4. Commodity funds (CORN, SOYB, WEAT, DBA, MOO) — direct exposure to crop prices or an agribusiness equity basket.[8]

Private routes. Direct farmland ownership (buy acres, cash-rent to an operator); farmland investment funds and platforms (AcreTrader, FarmTogether) for fractional, accredited-investor stakes; or operating a farm outright. These give the truest exposure to the land economics in Section 5 — cash rent plus appreciation for owners, the farming margin for operators. Diligence the farm itself: title and lease terms, soil and drainage, water rights, yield history, local basis, storage access, crop insurance, operator succession, working capital, debt structure, and exit liquidity.[15]

Near-term outlook (forward-looking). The setup for 2025–2026 is weak crop economics propped up by policy. USDA forecasts U.S. net farm income near $153 billion for both 2025 and 2026 — but that strength is driven by record cattle prices and heavy government payments; crop margins are the poorest in years, with program payments plus insurance doing much of the work of keeping row-crop farms in the black.[7][17][18] USDA's latest oilseed outlook also forecasts record U.S. soybean and canola production for 2026/27 on higher acreage and firm foreign demand — which can cap prices even as it lifts volumes.[3] The swing factors to watch: whether the China soybean deal holds and rebuilds export volume;[23] whether EPA's higher biofuel mandates lift soybean-oil and corn demand as expected;[21] fertilizer and interest-rate trends on the cost side; and whether record land values hold. For a landowner (or farmland REIT) the picture is steadier than for an operator: rents and land values kept rising even as crop prices fell,[19] which is why most public investors meet this industry as landlords rather than farmers. The strongest businesses — public or private — will be those with low unit costs, conservative leverage, reliable land and tenants, flexible marketing, and strong risk management.

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Sources

1. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, "2022 Census of Agriculture — Grain and Oilseed Production Highlights" (ACH22-13), 2024; and USDA Economic Research Service, "Farm Structure and Contracting" / "Large-scale Family Farms Lead in Value of Production, 2022." https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2024/census22-grain-oilseed.pdf
2. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS — 111191 Oilseed and Grain Combination Farming" (definition and exclusions), and "2022 NAICS Manual." https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=111191&year=2022
3. USDA Economic Research Service, "Soybeans & Oil Crops — Oil Crops Sector at a Glance" and "Soybeans and Oil Crops: Market Outlook," 2025–2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-and-oil-crops/oil-crops-sector-at-a-glance
4. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards Matched to NAICS Codes" (NAICS 111191 = $2.25 million, effective March 17, 2023). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns Methodology" and "Nonemployer Statistics FAQ"; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Overview" (all document exclusion of NAICS 111 / farm proprietors). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. Farmland Partners Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K (FY2025). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001591670&type=10-K
7. Gladstone Land Corporation, Annual Report on Form 10-K (FY2025). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001495240&type=10-K
8. Deere & Company, FY2025 results / Form 10-K; VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO) and Teucrium/Invesco agricultural fund materials. https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/investor-relations/
9. Corteva, Inc., 2025 Annual Report; ETC Group, "Food Barons" seed-sector concentration data (top four ≈ 56% of the seed market). https://investors.corteva.com/
10. Nutrien Ltd., Mosaic Company, and CF Industries — FY2025 company results (fertilizer and ag-retail scale). https://www.nutrien.com/investors
11. Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, Annual Report on Form 10-K, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000007084&type=10-K
12. Bunge Global SA, Annual Report on Form 10-K, 2025 (includes Viterra combination). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001996862&type=10-K
13. The Andersons, Inc., Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results, 2026. https://investors.andersonsinc.com/
14. AGCO Corporation, 2025 Annual Report. https://investors.agcocorp.com/
15. Company materials: Cargill (agriculture); CHS Inc.; Scoular (corporate profile); Louis Dreyfus Company (grains & oilseeds); Nuveen Natural Capital ("Investing in U.S. Row Crops"); Manulife Investment Management (agriculture strategies). https://www.cargill.com/agriculture
16. Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture, "2025 Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide," 2025. https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/paer-article/2025-purdue-crop-cost-and-return-guide/
17. American Soybean Association, "The Rising Cost Squeeze: Soybean Farmers Face a Third Year of Losses," 2025. https://soygrowers.com/news-releases/the-rising-cost-squeeze-soybean-farmers-face-a-third-year-of-losses/
18. USDA Economic Research Service, "Farm Sector Income Forecast," 2026 (net farm income projection). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-income-finances/farm-sector-income-forecast
19. USDA NASS, "Land Values 2025 Summary," Aug. 2025; American Farm Bureau Federation, "U.S. Agricultural Land Values and Cropland Cash Rents Reach Record Levels," 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2025/2025LandValuesCashRents_FINAL.pdf
20. USDA Farm Service Agency, "2025 Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) & Price Loss Coverage (PLC)" fact sheet, and farmdoc daily, "Projected ARC and PLC Payments for 2025"; USDA Risk Management Agency, "Revenue Protection" / Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/income-support/arc-plc
21. U.S. EPA, "Overview of the Renewable Fuel Standard Program" and "EPA Sets Record Renewable Fuel Volumes for 2026–2027"; USDA ethanol and soybean-oil use estimates. https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard/overview-renewable-fuel-standard-program
22. USDA Economic Research Service, "Farm Size and the Organization of U.S. Crop Farming" (ERR-152) and consolidation chart gallery. https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/8660/err-152.pdf
23. Investigate Midwest, "China resumes US soybean purchases under trade deal," 2026; American Farm Bureau Federation, "China Steps Back from U.S. Soybeans," 2025; farmdoc daily, "U.S.–China Soybean Deal," Nov. 2025. https://investigatemidwest.org/2026/07/01/china-resumes-us-soybean-purchases-under-trade-deal-with-trump-but-future-for-farmers-remains-daunting/
24. Regulation sources: U.S. EPA, "Introduction to Pesticide Labels" (FIFRA); USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, "Grain Standards" (U.S. Grain Standards Act); USDA Farm Service Agency, "Conservation Compliance" and "Conservation Reserve Program"; USDA Farm Service Agency, "Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA)." https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-labels/introduction-pesticide-labels