On what I was informed was a “nice cool day” the Rice Experiment Station in Biggs, California (it was 96°F), Jill Banfield and her team were busy at work in the middle of a lush green rice paddy. Like the majority of the world’s rice, this was a flooded paddy. To get to the middle required walking carefully along a series of planks through the sharp-edged rice leaves.

This flooding isn’t just for irrigation, in fact it’s more for weed control — rice doesn’t need to be flooded, but it can tolerate it for longer periods than most weeds. The problem, beyond the water demand, is what happens in the soil. In the anaerobic environment below the water, methane-producing microbes thrive. We grow so much rice around the world, this methane is a significant source of greenhouse-gas emissions, second only to beef in the agriculture space.

This video, produced by my team at the IGI, looks at the work going into studying these methane-producing microbes, and how we can continue to feed the world without the harmful emissions.

Full transcript here.