Salmon and Rice

Rice growers in California's Sacramento Valley may someday be managing their winter flooded rice fields for salmon. So Paul Buttner with the California Rice Commission told an Ag summit that his group is in the middle of a two year project working with rice growers, researchers and USDA. They've already proven fish grow faster and stronger, raised in rice fields, and by tagging the fish, they found a much larger percentage of these rice field fish survive and make it out to the sea compared to other fish. The study continues now on finding how best to bring water in and water and fish out of rice fields. “And then how can we develop conservation management practices to eventually get to where we can have growers signing up for these practices.” He's excited about the possibilities. And of course, the dwindling salmon population is a big issue in California and rice farmers could be a part of the solution. “We are lucky to have NRCS join us for a one point four million dollar project, we’re in year two of the two year project right now where they have proven that baby salmon grow very rapidly in rice fields. Why? Well, it's because of that jar of winter rice field water. It's exactly what they need to grow big and fast. And we really appreciate and enjoy our relationship with the state and federal wildlife agencies that provide us hatchery fish for these projects that we're doing right now.