Customer Story

Nicole Van Vleck remembers well the advice she received from her father and mentor, Al Montna, who, in the latter half of the last century, expanded and made a name for the large, integrated rice operation his own father established 30 miles north of Sacramento in the 1930s.

"[My father] was there with the California Rice Industry Association during the 1980s, and when they formed the California Rice Commission in the 1990s, and it really helped communication within the industry – not just through meetings and organization, but with relationships." Nicole recalls. “He was insistent that I do the same. He said, ‘You need to make those relationships before you need them, before you get into an issue that you need to resolve.’”

Today, Nicole’s professional prowess and industry influence more than prove the power in those words. As chairman and chief executive officer of Montna Farms, a leading supplier of premium short grain specialty rice, she leads her family’s company as it grows, dries and stores its product in a vertically integrated operation.

Montna is also a partner in American Commodity Company, which operates a mill with two other farm families. There, the rice is processed, packaged and marketed for sale. Under Nicole’s guidance, her family’s company has expanded operations in recent years.

“I’ve been back at the farm for 31 years,” she says. “Since then, we’ve grown both in drying and storage, and in our land holdings. We’ve focused on rice as our primary crop, and we spend a lot of time with rice growing and water activities.”

Montna is one of the largest rice operations in California, where most of the nation’s sushi rice is grown within 100 miles of Sacramento. The fertile Sacramento Valley is perfectly suited for growing medium- and short-grain japonica varieties with the sticky, moist characteristics ideal for sushi and other Asian and Mediterranean cuisines.

Not only has Nicole overseen unprecedented company growth in her three decades – exporting heavily to Japan and South Korea and to customers around the U.S. – she has been an influential presence in the larger rice and farming industry, both in California and at the nation’s capital.

She currently serves on the California Rice Commission, a regulatory body supporting producers, and on the California Rice Industry Association and USA Rice Federation, both advocacy groups. She has held leadership positions with the California Rice Producers and USA Rice Farmers, a subgroup of the rice federation, as well.

She is also active in USA Rice’s leadership program, which selects seven members every year from the association’s leadership to help unite member states and educate one another about important issues.

“It’s helped the relationship-building among millers, marketers, farmers,” she says. “It really helps our small industry stay together.”

Nicole says her extensive involvement at the policy level is crucial for keeping her industry unified in an increasingly regulated and competitive climate.

“The rice industry has done a really nice job of bringing the whole industry under one organization at USA Rice,” she says. “The merchants, millers and farmers are all represented. We’re too small an industry not to be working together – or to be working against each other.”

In addition to her advocacy work, relationships Nicole has built over the years play a key role in her work on local species conservation.

When regulatory bodies banned the burning of rice straw at the end of each harvest in the late 1990s, farmers began to flood their fields instead to break down the material in preparation for next year’s crop. To everyone’s delight, millions of waterfowl from as far north as Alaska, Canada and Siberia – whose appearances had diminished – began returning each year to winter in California’s Sacramento Valley, which previously held many natural wetlands.

The return of the waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway is one of Nicole’s greatest joys and most important endeavors.

“We’ve been flooding our rice fields for over 30 years and have seen the return of so many species of ducks and fowl,” she says, adding that she and other rice farmers provide extra water for the wildlife during the shoulder seasons. “We’ve developed many relationships, with The Nature Conservancy, for example, to see how we can keep helping the bird returns.”

To drive these efforts, Nicole serves on the conservation committee of the Northern California Water Association (NCWA), which is focused on a cross-organizational endeavor called Floodplain Forward.

Together, NCWA, the state’s rice commission, and Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group, are working together to find solutions on how the rice lands can be used as surrogate floodplains, not just for ducks and geese but also for shore birds, salmon and certain species of threatened snakes.

“We used to burn the fields every fall,” she says. “Now, we reincorporate three tons of straw back into the earth each year, which not only improves our soil, but requires us to use less fertilizer and provides the birds material for bedding, food and nesting.”

Another way Montna Farms leverages relationships is by making their operation available to academic and environmental groups. They frequently welcome students and researchers from UC Davis and Ducks Unlimited to use the farm as a sort of incubator, testing and tracking fowl and watching trends.

They’ve also secured multiple farm protection easements, which permanently protect farmlands from being developed for any other purpose and even provide winter habitat for migratory birds.

“We need rice to be viable in the Sacramento Valley, and it’s not just for the small communities and the farmers, but for the birds, salmon and snakes,” Nicole says. “Continuing to work with the rice commission and water groups and others to encourage people who might be interested in permanent or short-term easements on their lands to keep the rice industry viable is extremely important.”

Educating those outside her industry has become a big part of her job. Montna Farms frequently hosts tours and forums, including for federal and state legislators. These meetings help lawmakers and others better understand the rice industry’s interface with wildlife.

Montna Farms even hosted a tour for AgWest's noncustomer-facing staff during the 2024 harvest and plans to do so again.

“It’s really a learning experience from start to finish, from how they grew the crop, to harvesting, to what they do afterward,” says AgWest Relationship Manager Gennefer Reed. “They have added a lot of value back to us here at AgWest.”

When asked what she would tell someone starting out in farming or looking to get involved, Nicole says there are many opportunities to find value once you start looking around.

“Go and sit through some meetings – many are open – and start following the issues,” she says. “Find an area within the industry that excites you, where you feel you might be able to become an expert. It takes time – you can’t do it overnight.”

There are water districts that need representation, research boards, industry activities and policy committees, she says. Start locally and with the industry you’re involved in.

“I was lucky to have a lot of mentors in leadership who helped me along the way,” she says. “They taught me how to approach a legislator, and how to be a good board member. Find someone who’s been around for a long time and can tell you about the history of the organization. You mostly just have to ask.”

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