MICHAEL FRUGE
RICE FARMING
In any career field, the talent search is always on. In sports that’s especially true. The Canadian hockey icon Wayne Gretzky was first noticed by north of the border media, when he scored 378 goals during the 1971-72 season…at the age of 10. Others like Mark Zuckerberg in social media, or Ben Affleck & Matt Damon in the movie industry, began to make their presence known in their respective disciplines around the time they could (legally) buy a beer in a Boston bar.
Far removed from New England around the time Zuckerberg gave birth to Facebook at Harvard, and the Boston natives Ben & Matt created “Good Will Hunting”, a second-generation farmer in waiting from southwest Louisiana graduated from LSU. While he’ll probably never be as well-known as those mentioned above, at the time they attained their fame, he was starting to gain attention as well: from the academics & executives who call the shots in the rice industry.
“I saw talent early on with Michael Fruge,” says Steve Linscombe, who today works for the U.S. Rice Federation, after a long career with Louisiana State University. “He was working with Dr. Eric Webster at the time. I found him to be very mature for his age as a student, eager to learn, asking questions all the time.”
Linscombe also worked with Fruge after his college graduation, when he embarked on a fourteen year stay with Horizon Ag, where his reputation as a young guy making a big impact grew.
“The foundation of his success at Horizon Ag were his work ethic and people skills,” Linscombe said. When contacted about Michael’s time at Horizon Ag, his former boss, CEO Dr. Tim Walker, spoke in depth about his former employee, and the contribution he made to the Memphis, Tennessee based rice giant.
“I’ve had the privilege of knowing Michael for almost 20 years and working with him in various capacities,” Walker began. “Michael is a “rice-guy” through and through. Leadership is one of Michael’s many strengths. He possesses an in-depth understanding of the issues facing the southern USA rice industry and is a vocal advocate for our industry’s strengths and to exhort us to be aware and make changes in our weaknesses. Michael is bold in speaking up, even when his views are not popular. Michael is not one who just calls out the need for change, he actively contributes to it. He has carved out his place in the industry,” Walker said.
O.K, so who is this we are talking about?
“If you always wanted to live in the tropics but just didn’t want to make that kind of move, come to southwest Louisiana,” says Michael Fruge, resident of Eunice, Louisiana, on a cell phone, seated behind a wheel, somewhere on his 3,500 acre farm, located 45 minutes north of Vermillion Bay, the area portal to the Gulf of Mexico. A second-generation farmer who today works alongside his father Raymond, Fruge has become the major name of the rice farming industry in that water abundant part of the country.
In fact, the access of his property to the water world of the Gulf Coast opened up a second livelihood for Fruge’s Ag business: crawfish. “We commonly have five, six, seven inch rainfalls here,” he says. Aided by all the precipitation in his sphere of life, those crawfish ride the subtle wave that transports them from the Gulf to the so-called “pillow traps” that await them on Michael’s property.
But his world is rice farming. And it was always going to be that way.
Raised in the Eunice area, when Michael left home, he did so for a four-year stay in Baton Rouge, the home of LSU. After graduation, he didn’t immediately head home like many graduates with Ag degrees do. According to Michael, the table wasn’t set for his return to Eunice. “My Dad was not farming enough at the time for me to come back and jump into the operation there. Then, I got married, my wife was in optometry school in Houston, and I went to work with Horizon Ag, working with and learning from many farmers and Industry people there, so we settled in for a few years. I really liked what I was doing, I saw so many different aspects of the industry, traveling around, working with so many farmers, learning from them, it was a great experience,” he said.
Then the Fruge’s moved back to Louisiana in 2009. Taking Horizon Ag with him, but also beginning to work on the family farm. “Horizon allowed me to do it,” he says, adding the move home reunited him with his Father. “My Dad and I have our business interests separate on paper, but we do everything together,” Michael says. At the time, he was a full time Horizon Ag employee, but everyone involved knew the day was coming when he would leave the company. “It was a bittersweet day when Michael came to me and said he was leaving Horizon Ag, but we all knew it would happen, that he would go on to bigger and better things,” Tim Walker remembers.
During the first decade home, Michael farmed and his wife, now known as Dr. Sarah Fruge O.D., tended to the eye care of the Acadian world. But, in 2019, there was a major development in the family business world, the development of a company that would grow the Fruge brand in a major way.
“Sarah and I conceived Prairie Acadian Rice and at our kitchen dining table. It was our first brand. But down the road I felt I needed to create a higher protein, lower glycemic rice. I hired a marketing firm, and they convinced me that we needed to create a niche, rebranded rice, a step beyond Prairie Acadian Rice, “he said.
That led to the birth of what is today the highly successful Parish Rice.
According to Steve Linscombe, he was not surprised to see Michael the farmer, become his own CEO. “The jump from farmer to businessman is a very difficult endeavor to navigate. Farming is tough enough. It takes a superior skill set to develop a marketing enterprise and be successful. When he developed his brand, he did what he’s always done in the past: he asked the right questions and did his homework,” he said.
Today, the company known as M&S Fruge Farms employs around 12 workers, with soybean farming having become a part of the operation, with the rice and crawfish divisions.
Being in business means having to deal with current conditions that have polarized America agriculture and the country at large. Presently, things are to put it kindly, bumpy. Michael has his take on what’s going down, starting with the rice business. “For one, I think we have to be more diversified. I feel the rice industry in the United States is kind of in a bad spot. We’ve turned rice into a commodity. I just feel like we can do a better job of marketing what we grow. We have different tools, different varieties to get out there. Look at California, they’ve done a very good job of doing that. When You go around the world, everyone knows the “Calrose” rice brand. That’s a great job of marketing,” Michael observed.
When it comes to the current bottom line, Fruge says its tough right now for farmers. “I try to keep everything in our business separate. If you look at just the farming business, there was just no way to make money the way things were in 2025. Going into 2026, we’re staring down the barrel of a gun, with the same bullet,” he said.
Regardless of the current challenges in the business world in general and the farming world in particular, the people that have known Fruge see no obstacles to his continued success. According to Steve Linscombe, “Michael is a very good farmer, marketer, he’s active in the national rice industry, holds many positions at the state, parish and local level. He checks a lot of boxes. He was rice farmer of the year at a very young age. There was a reason for that.”
One last thing about Michael, he loves to fly. He’s well known in the aviation world of southwest Louisiana. When he’s in his plane, flying over his property, one has to wonder what he thinks about when he considers the future.
What will come next for this young man who’s achieved so much in such a brief time period? Politics maybe? When asked about that possibility, Michael just laughed. One things for sure, though it took a while for him to make his way back home, chances are like so many others in his way of life, he’ll never leave.
PHOTO NAMES Michael, Julia Grace (Baby) Clare (Glasses), Reese (tallest), Ainsley, and Sarah (Wife).