Producing More Rice With Less Climate Change

[unspeakablehorror]

So, I've been researching the statement about rice exacerbating climate change by increasing methane emissions.  My first question was how rice increases methane emissions since there wasn't any intuitively obvious (to me) mechanism whereby that happens.  I was able to find out that it wasn't the rice itself causing the increase, but rather microorganisms that find standard rice paddies an ideal growth medium.  My second question was whether there was a way to reduce the methane being produced by rice paddies without reducing overall yields.  Apparently, there is.  It seems that many varieties of rice can be grown with less water, which can significantly cut the methane producing microorganisms.  The issue of course is that there's insufficient incentives for most rice growers to use methods that produce less methane.  As this method also uses less water, it seems like it has the potential to be greatly valuable to incentivize.

Here's some articles that were talking about how to reduce the environmental impact of this staple crop without decreasing rice yields:

http://www.ghgonline.org/methanerice.htm

https://www.wri.org/blog/2014/12/more-rice-less-methane

This is an example of a valuable improvement that can't be implemented on the consumer buying level.  Given the groups who would be disproportionately impacted by such a directive, It's also rather racist to imply to consumers that they should just eat less rice, or that they should feel bad for eating rice. 

I think it is important for people to be aware of situations like this, though.  If we want positive changes to happen, we need to at least know what those positive changes should be.  This also doesn't come close to addressing the entire environmental footprint of agriculture, it's just one of the areas where it seems worth looking into how we can improve matters.