Wet year allows more rice to be planted
Thanks to a wet winter and spring, California rice country is humming with activity again, with planes dropping seed on flooded fields and equipment working the ground as planting ramps up in the Sacramento Valley. It’s a scene that Colusa County grower Bruce Rolen says he views with elation, considering he planted not one grain of rice a year ago. At the height of the state’s multiyear drought, reduced water deliveries to farms last season left “fallow fields that were just growing tumbleweeds and thistle plants,” he said. Plentiful rainfall, an enormous snowpack and brimming reservoirs have changed all that, with farmers “just tickled” that they will have enough water to plant their full acreage.
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