The Fishy Repair to a Methane-Spewing Crop

Next time you take a seat to a bowl of steaming rice, consider this: Of all the grains humans consume, rice has the biggest carbon footprint Obviously, rice is a staple for half of humankind, which partly discusses the outsize footprint. The big problem, though, is that rice is usually grown in water, and there’s not much oxygen in the muddy bottom of a rice paddy. That low-oxygen muck is a delighted location for a type of bacteria that produces methane And each methane particle can do even more harm to the environment than a carbon dioxide particle, contributing almost 30 times more warming over a 100- year span.

In other words, when you grow rice, you likewise grow a great deal of climate-heating bacteria.

One potential option: fish. Experiments by the not-for-profit Resource Renewal Institute recommend that presenting fish to rice paddies kicks off a waterfall of events that changes the water’s bacterial neighborhoods and ends with less methane dripping into the atmosphere. The repair likewise offers up a various method of thinking of how living systems contribute to climate change.

If the project pans out, it could change rice cultivation around the world. In 2015, the outdoor-wear company Patagonia, a major funder of the institute, raised concerns about the climate impact of rice. The company asked Moskowitz i