Sarah-Jane Taylor and Craig Taylor are at the forefront of a groundbreaking agricultural project in the Fens, United Kingdom, where they explore the feasibility of growing rice. With climate change forcing agriculture reform and adaptation around the country, the idea has made a lot of inroads with other farmers. This recent land-use shift underscores the need for innovation in agriculture as farmers are challenged with more extreme weather and soil degradation.
The UK’s climate is already undergoing a dramatic transformation, with warmer winters and summers, as well as drier conditions in summer and more intense storms in winter. These economic conditions create the perfect storm requiring farmers to change what crops they grow and how they grow them. Sarah-Jane Taylor notes that the degradation of soil quality necessitates a transformation in farming techniques to ensure sustainable agriculture for future generations.
“We recognize that our soils are depleting and that we need to change to secure the future,” – Sarah-Jane Taylor
Water scarcity is another urgent issue, and Taylor predicts this will become an even greater problem. Rice has never been grown in the UK on a commercial scale. This is slowly changing, as recent innovations show that growing rice could be a realistic prospect as climate change pushes prime rice-growing conditions further north across Europe. Successful, multifunctional rice farming initiatives have already been realized in neighboring countries such as the Netherlands and Germany.
Nadine Mitschunas is a field ecologist based at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH). Through her work she is deeply committed to this exploration. She transitioned recently from playing around with adult rice plants thriving in the fertile soils of England’s breadbasket. We began by cultivating cereals through germination in lab conditions. After that, in June, we transplanted the seedlings into the rafts and started harvesting at the beginning of October.
“It’s not such a crazy idea because it seems to work,” – Nadine Mitschunas
Mitschunas has experimented with nine rice varieties typically cultivated in US, Philippine, Macedonian and Japanese low countries. Of these varieties, four have been found to be promising, with one from Colombia leading the way. If these tests prove successful, they might pave the way for more innovative agricultural practices across the UK.
The Fens landscape features some of the most fertile soil in the world, underpinning exemplary agricultural productivity per unit area. It provides a third of all of England’s vegetables, and 20% of our potatoes and beetroots. Farmers such as Sarah-Jane Taylor are experimenting with different types of crops. In some areas of the UK, sunflower, durum wheat, soybean, chickpeas, lemon and okra could all potentially be suitable candidates.
“Once upon a time potatoes and sugar beet weren’t grown here and now they’re one of the main crops in the area,” – Sarah-Jane Taylor
As the agricultural landscape continues to change, researchers and practitioners stress the need to engage farmers in new and exciting practices.
“We need to get farmers involved, who are actually going to plant the crops,” – [Unnamed source]
The urgency of adapting to climate change cannot be overstated.
“If we wait until 20 or 30 years, and then realize that we can’t grow wheat… like we always have done, we’ve then got a problem,” – [Unnamed source]