Tell Congress to support winter rice field flooding in the Farm Bill!

A trial in Mississippi has found that flooding rice fields during the winter to provide habitat for migratory birds provides valuable fertilization and soil-mixing services.

Winter flooding of rice fields is taking off in the Mississippi River Basin, attracting migratory birds to mix, flatten, and nitrogen-fertilize the soil for next year’s crop! Winter rice flooding has a long history in many parts of the world, such as Japan’s traditional satoyama system. Mississippi farmer Mike Wagner’s multi-year trial of the practice has yielded excellent results with amazing potential to be scaled up across America’s rice fields.

“I finally figured out that the ducks and the geese were doing the same thing [mixing and flattening the soil] as what we were doing.

It was free of charge.”

— Mike Wagner, Mississippi rice farmer.

When Mississippi State University researchers investigated Wagner’s Two Brooks Farm one winter, they found that bird droppings were contributing almost a third of the recommended nitrogen for rice, thanks to the compounding effects of many years of bird-attracting flooding. The study calculates that on average, applying these winter rice field flooding techniques could reduce the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers by 13%, while increasing the organic carbon stored the soil!

That matters. The production and use of common nitrogen fertilizers accounts for about 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen fertilizer runoff often creates oxygen-depleted “dead zones” downstream and in the ocean, and synthetic fertilizers made with fossil gas expose farmers to a never-ending price roller-coaster. There’s lots of opportunity to scale up winter flooding of rice fields: according to the USDA, the U.S. produces hundreds of millions of hundredweight of rice per year in growing regions from the Mississippi Delta to the Sacramento Valley. It’s a major export crop!

Congress is still considering the next Farm Bill, a huge investment in American agriculture (the U.S. spends an average of $648 billion per year on Farm Bill programs) that’s up for renewal for the first time since 2018. Winter flooding of rice fields and the co-benefits from attracting migratory birds is an innovation that isn’t really on the political radar screen yet. That means there’s a really great opportunity here for Congress to use the Farm Bill to help promote its deployment across America with supportive tax and regulatory incentives!

Tell Congress to support winter rice field flooding in the Farm Bill!