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Drip irrigation emerges to solve rice paddy problem

FILE PHOTO: Women plant rice saplings at a paddy field in a village in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam, India, July 3, 2018. (Reuters)

JERUSALEM: An Israeli company has developed a drip irrigation system for growing rice to replace the flooded paddies that have supplied the world with rice for generations but cause a surprising level of damage to the environment.

Rice is the staple food for more than half the global population, but its cultivation uses 30-40% of the world’s freshwater and is responsible for 10% of manmade emissions of greenhouse gas methane, according to the UN-backed Sustainable Rice Platform.

Netafim, a company that pioneered drip irrigation decades ago to grow produce like potatoes and melons across Israel’s challenging arid landscape, has just finished a pilot…

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