Designing the Future of Rice Systems
Innovate Rice helps mills, traders, and partners redesign how rice is grown, processed, moved, and marketed.
About Innovate Rice
Innovate Rice exists to help the global rice industry solve complex problems by redesigning systems, not just tweaking parts. We work with mills, traders, technology companies, NGOs, and investors to rethink how rice moves from field to final buyer -through better machinery systems, smarter post‑harvest handling, and more resilient market structures.
About Layne Fortenberry
Founder Layne Fortenberry has spent more than two decades in the rice business, from hands‑on work in a Stuttgart family mill and machinery systems to structuring cross‑border deals and logistics into challenging markets. He founded Grainster, an online grain trading platform that won the Talent Unleashed USA Global Award for “Best Idea,” judged by Steve Wozniak and Richard Branson. That journey sparked a deeper focus on systems: seeing the entire rice value chain—people, equipment, contracts, and incentives—and designing new ways for it to work.
Today, Layne’s work at Innovate Rice sits at the intersection of rice operations, systems‑level design, and innovation. He partners with clients to map their current rice systems, identify structural bottlenecks and risks, and design practical architectures—facility layouts, hub concepts, supply networks, and business models—that can be implemented and scaled in the real world.
What We Design and Improve
We focus on rice as a complete system—machinery, processes, people, and markets—not just one machine or one contract.
New ways to create and capture value in the rice world.
• Concept design for new rice‑based products and by‑product ventures
• Joint‑venture and startup concepts around processing, logistics, or technology
• Strategy support for mills and traders exploring new markets or models
• Independent, system‑level perspective on where to innovate (and where not to)
Structuring how rice moves and how deals get done.
• Mapping and redesign of rice supply chains and trade corridors
• Concepts for resilient supply into fragile or import‑dependent markets
• Trading and contract structures that align incentives across farmers, mills, traders, and buyers
• Early‑stage design of digital or platform‑based rice trading systems
Design and optimization of the physical and process side of rice.
• Mill and machinery system layouts, from intake to bagging or bulk
• Evaluation and redesign of cleaning, drying, storage, and milling flows
• Bottleneck and capacity analysis to increase throughput and reduce loss
• Integration of by‑product systems (bran, hulls, broken rice) into revenue streams
Let’s Talk About Your Rice System
Whether you’re wrestling with a mill bottleneck, a fragile trade route, or a new rice venture idea, we start by understanding your current system end‑to‑end. From there, we work with you to design options that are both innovative and buildable.
Layne@InnovateRice.com
501.425.9492
Open today | 08:00 am – 05:00 pm |
