Koda Farms, a family-run rice business revered by chefs, ends a century-long tradition.
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Reporting from Los Angeles
When the water is cut in August, the rice fields of South Dos Palos, Calif., go from green to gold. As the plants dry, Robin and Ross Koda, the brother and sister duo who manage Koda Farms, wait for just the right moment to harvest.
Keisaburo Koda, their grandfather, started the family rice business in Central California 97 years ago. Koda Farms developed Kokuho Rose, a new rice variety first sold in the 1960s, and influenced generations of chefs to cook with excellent, American-grown Japanese-style rice.
But this fall, there will be no new crop rice for sale on the family homestead. Koda Farms is closing up shop. “People really romanticize farming,” Ms. Koda said, “but it’s becoming more and more challenging.”
She pointed to the soaring cost of water for farms in California, a surge in insurance premiums and the cost of organic fertilizer, gas and new equipment, along with the small and aging labor pool in rural Merced County. On top of those grievances, which are familiar to most farmers, Koda has been dedicated to growing a particularly low-yielding heirloom rice on poor adobe soil.
“Kokuho Rose was a modern rice in my grandfather’s era,” Ms. Koda said. “But now it’s antiquated: too tall, too slow-growing, too low-yielding.”
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