Ken LaGrande

We would travel regularly to China to research [ the market ], attend trade shows and meet the industry players, it was a commitment we made as a family to persist. So when the opportunity opened up, we were ready.

California's rice growing regions are the same latitude as Korea and Japan. So we all grow the same kind of rice -- medium grain and short grain -- that's popular in Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine, but Chinese consumers, who eat rice every day, will now have more choice with Sun Valley Rice.

Sun Valley Rice now is a fully integrated arm of the family business,' from farm to fork' if you will, we source rice from 200 farms, or about 10 % of the rice crop gown in California. And we handle drying, milling, packaging and marketing of the rice.

Anytime we export to a foreign country, there are risks we think about, but we also develop strategies to help is mitigate those risks.