According to Oxfam America, rice farmers could produce 50% more rice using less water than with current techniques.
Rice farmers normally rely on flooding their fields to keep seeds covered in water throughout the growing season. But farmers in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and India have been able to produce as much as 50 percent more rice with less water, and often with less labor, by planting seedlings farther apart, keeping fields moist instead of flooding them, transplanting seedlings to fields earlier and weeding manually.
According to Oxfam, water-intensive rice farming accounts for as much as a third of the world’s entire fresh water consumption.
Rice fields in Indonesia
Source: Reuters
