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The article mentions (bulk, agricultural) rice prices of ~$16 per hundredweight - which is about 16 cents (US) per pound.

Vs. what price did you last pay at the grocer, when you purchase a bag of rice?

One might think that the food distribution industry is over-ripe for some very disruptive disintermediation...

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Average U.S. retail price looks to be about 96 cents per pound.

https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailf...

Are you sure that that is not the price of rice before drying, cleaning, sorting, hulling, milling, polishing and sorting again?

Looking at the only-slightly-wider chasm between the ag. commodity price of wheat, and the retail price of wheat grains - note that wheat needs less than 1/2 of the steps you list - I'm thinking that the actual processing only justifies a tiny fraction of the markup for rice.

Since "Sorting" means removal of pieces of stem and such and milling removes the hulls, the price per pound is sure to increase more that a tiny fraction unless the pieces of stem or the hulls are valuable, which I doubt.

Also, "drying" sounds like it could easily halve the weight of a grain of rice. Unlike wheat, rice spends its life in a very wet environment.

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