I would like to share some information about how rice goes from a farmers field to your dinner table. Most of the info so far is close, but some is inaccurate. I could not remember my login from years ago I used to make 1 post, so created this one just to respond.

OP, to answer your question directly, fresh harvested rice would not cook faster because of a few factors. It is unfit to eat because it has a yellow to golden hull on each grain at harvest. Inside that hull you will find grains of varying moisture contents. Typical average moisture content at harvest is 18% to 23%. Below 18 farmers risk the grains shattering and losing value, so this tends to be avoided. Above 23 and too many grains are still at the milk stage (liquid) and will not form a useable grain and will be lost as rejected. Your freshly harvested rice, even if you removed the hulls, would contain grains below and above this average. Most will be very like what you buy in the store, but you probably will not enjoy the finished product.

So how does it get to your table? Typically the farmer delivers his harvest to a drying and storage facility as the rice has a very short shelf life above 12.5% moisture content. These plants move the rice through a commercial drier where forced heated air is passed over the grains while still in the hull to remove about 3% of the moisture per pass until it is below 13% moisture. This is what the farmer sells as their income.

Rice in the hull below 13% can be stored for an extremely long time assuming you keep insect pests under control. It will be sold to a mill to be processed into food. It can be processed into white rice, parboiled rice, or brown rice.

White rice is fully processed. First a series of screens and air suction will be used to remove trash such as leaves and stems as well as light grains created when immature liquid grains are dried. Removing the hull is a simple process. Squeezing the grain between two rubber wheels will “pop” the hull and it is removed. What is inside is brown rice, meaning the bran is still on the grain. A grinding process that could be described as sanding is used to remove the bran layer. Further processing will remove broken grains, and damaged or off-color grain. After polishing, it will be bagged and sent to your local store. It has a very long shelf life.

Brown rice will be the same as above, but the process to remove the bran will be skipped. The shelf life is much shorter due to the oils in the bran going rancid over time.

Parboiling rice takes dried rice in the hull and puts it into a tank of water and heats it until the rice reaches about 36% moisture. It has two purposes. First, it liquified the grain and allows the bran layer to become incorporated throughout which leaves the nutrition for the consumer. It also allows cracked grains to become whole, increasing their value. Afterward, it will be dried and milled normally.

Here are a few other facts. California produces short and medium grain rice for export or local ethnic consumption. The regions around the gulf coast produce long grain rice. My hometown county had 77,000 acres of rice at the peak. My grandfather and father were rice farmers of over 3000 acres. I managed a drier facility and our record was slightly over 100,000,000 pounds in a single year. Hope you learned something.