KarunaNews Story

One thing distinguishes 60-year-old Vo Van Van’s rice fields from thousands of others across Long An province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. It isn’t entirely flooded, and a giant drone rains organic fertilizer onto the rice seedlings. Using less water and a drone to fertilize are new techniques that Vietnam hopes will help solve the paradox that rice cultivation is both vulnerable to climate change and contributes uniquely to it. Flooded fields stop oxygen from entering the soil, creating the conditions for methane-producing bacteria. One of Vietnam’s largest rice exporters, the Loc Troi Group, is using alternate wetting and drying and wants to expand acreage using the methods from the current 100 hectares to 300,000 hectares.