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PORTSIDE CULTURE

CALIFORNIA'S KODA FARMS, HEIRLOOM RICE PRODUCER, CEASES OPERATIONS  
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Elena Kadvany
August 12, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
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_ Koda Farms, the family-owned rice farm in Merced County, which
Keisaburo Koda started 97 years ago, is shutting down. Its rice is
prized by chefs and home cooks alike. _

Koda Farms was a pioneer in aerial rice farming, pictured above in
the 1930s., Courtesy Koda Farms

 

Koda Farms, whose heirloom rice has been prized by chefs and home
cooks alike for almost a century, is shutting down.

The closure of the family-owned farm in Merced County, which Keisaburo
Koda started 97 years ago, was first reported by the New York Times
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His grandchildren, third-generation farmers Robin and Ross Koda, run
the farm today. The rising costs of farming in California, from
fertilizer to insurance and labor, have put undue pressure on the
small operation.

“It’s time,” Robin Koda told the Chronicle on Monday. “Over
the years, the challenges have become more than we want to handle.”

Koda Farms’ heirloom rice
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a staple in many of the country’s top restaurants, a product so
beloved many chefs vividly recall the first time they tasted it, even
years later. The family produces varieties from brown rice to sweet
glutinous rice for its mochiko flour, and famously spent a decade
developing a new Japanese-style heirloom variety called Kokuho Rose.
Bred specifically for the farm’s soil and climate in the 1960s,
Kokuho Rose remains enduringly popular today. It’s the rice of
choice for chefs like Sylvan Mishima Brackett of Rintaro in San
Francisco and Brandon Jew of San Francisco’s Michelin-starred
restaurant Mister Jiu’s. Jew’s 2021 cookbook features a
photograph of Robin Koda in the rice fields and a tribute to the
“sweet, floral” rice and its legacy in California. 

Robin and Ross Koda are in their 60s. They have no succession plan:
“I would never tell my kids they have to farm because it’s just an
unforgiving, relentless profession,” Robin Koda said. But thanks to
trademarks that their grandfather obtained decades ago, Koda Farms’
products will live on. The Kodas licensed five of their trademarks to
Western Foods, a grain manufacturer in Woodland (Yolo County),
Robin Koda said. Western will continue to produce their rice under
strict licensing agreements that mandate quality standards.

“This is a golden opportunity to preserve the integrity of the
product,” Robin Koda said. “They will continue to meet the
hallmarks that our grandfather set in place.”

Keisaburo Koda, a former school principal, immigrated to the U.S. from
Ogawa, Japan, in 1908. He plied various trades — wildcatting for
oil, working in laundromats and opening a tuna canning company —
before going into rice farming. Amid anti-Asian sentiment and the
California Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented Chinese, Japanese
and other Asian immigrants from owning or leasing agricultural land,
he had to look farther and farther south in California, beyond the
more established farmland of the Sacramento Valley, to find someone
who would sell him land, Robin Koda said. He bought the South Dos
Palos (Merced County) land that would become Koda Farms under his
American-born sons’ names. 

The Koda family was displaced to Colorado because of Japanese
internment during World War II, forced to temporarily hand over the
farm to a new operator until their release in 1945. When they
returned, just 1,000 acres of the “worst soil” remained, Robin
Koda said. They moved about a mile down the road and started over.

Keisaburo helped pioneer new rice techniques, including sowing seeds
with airplanes, and became known as the “Rice King of California.”
Koda Farms operates its own seed nursery, drying and milling
facilities, which has helped preserve quality over the decades, Robin
Koda said. He died in 1964.

Bay Area chefs were devastated by the news of Koda Farms’ closure.
Theirs was the “childhood rice” of Brackett, who has been serving
it at Rintaro since he opened the California-Japanese restaurant in
2014. Gaby Maeda, chef at Friends and Family in Oakland and formerly
of the Michelin-starred State Bird Provisions in San Francisco, was
first exposed to the company as a fourth-grader growing up on Oahu,
Hawaii, learning in a school cooking class how to make mochiko chicken
with Koda Farms’ sweet rice flour. 

“That blue star on the white box will always be the most iconic
thing,” she said, referring to the rice flour’s packaging. Her
family’s rice cooker was often filled with half white rice, half
Koda Farms brown rice. She used the rice flour again as a young chef
at State Bird Provisions to create a savory mochi dish that became a
yearslong menu staple. 

“We never tried any other flour because if it’s perfect the way it
is, don’t change it,” Maeda said. “They’ve (had) such a huge
impact on so many different restaurants around the country.”

C-Y Chia, co-owner of the recently closed Lion Dance Cafe in Oakland,
has been cooking with Koda Farms’ rice since the restaurant’s
early pop-up days. The mochiko rice flour was essential to Lion Dance
Cafe’s popular nian gao dessert, a chewy coconut cake. Not only was
the product top-tier, Chia felt connected to the history behind it.

“The people behind companies matter. It’s sad that the conditions
have become such that they cannot continue and carry on with their
legacy,” Chia said. “There’s definitely a bit of grieving (and)
a bit of fear — it’s an indicator of how bad things have
gotten.”

The closure, chefs said, is another reminder of the sharply rising
costs affecting the entire food industry. 

“Unfortunately, everything is temporary in life but you get so used
to a certain quality,” Maeda said. “When it’s gone — that’s
why it’s so important to not take farms for granted.”

Western Foods did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Western President Miguel Reyna told the New York Times that the
company will farm some Kokuho Rose rice in Dos Palos as well as in the
Sacramento Delta region, but will move all processing and packaging to
Northern California. Some of Koda’s Blue Star Mochiko and Diamond K
rice flours may also be processed at Western’s mill in Arkansas. 

Under the licensing agreements, Koda Farms’ packaging will mostly
remain intact — including the photograph of Keisaburo
Koda standing in the rice fields that decorates many of the
company’s bags of rice.

_Reach Elena Kadvany: [email protected]_

Elena Kadvany has been a reporter on the Chronicle’s Food & Wine
team since 2021. She covers the ins and outs of the Bay Area food
industry, from breaking news about the latest restaurant openings to
investigative stories into wage theft and workers’ rights. In 2024,
her food writing portfolio won second place in the Society for
Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features awards. Previously, she
covered restaurants and education for the Palo Alto Weekly; her work
has also been published in Bon Appetit and the Guardian, and her
reporting has been recognized by the California News Publishers
Association.

She can be reached at [email protected].

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