For Huey Johnson, the “grand old man” of environmentalists in California, “the idea of rearing salmon in fallowed rice fields started in a duck blind,” says Yale e360. Surrounded by acres of flooded fields, Johnson wondered what could be done with all the water. “His answer: Grow fish.”
Some other scientists had a similar idea and showed that salmon diverted into the Sacramento River floodplain grew twice as fast as salmon that stayed in the river. In 2012, the groups joined forces in the Nigiri Project, named for a type of sushi, to use rice fields to promote salmon restoration. “The scientists have since compiled persuasive evidence that salmon benefit greatly by lingering in flooded rice fields,” writes Jacque Leslie. “The salmon project is likely within a year or two of overcoming the last bureaucratic obstacles keeping it from operating as a government-sanctioned method of mitigating environmental harm.”
Meanwhile, Johnson launched another fish project, called “Fish in the Fields,” that focuses on growing forage fish that are harvested when the fields are drained. “Then the fish can be turned into bait, livestock and poultry feed, pet food, fertilizer, dietary supplements and food for humans,” says Yale e360. Johnson is experimenting with Arkansas golden shiners, a hardy minnow that grew well in early trials. He hopes his pilot project will inspire rice farmers to enter the global forage-fish market.
“Both projects suggest the rising influence of ‘reconciliation ecology,’” writes Leslie. Its advocates, such as Michael Rosenzweig, of the University of Arkansas, say humans have profoundly transformed so much of the world that the only way to avoid mass extinctions is to adapt working land to support other species while continuing to serve the needs of humans.
Farmers in Southeast Asia have raised fish in rice fields for centuries, often at the same time that rice is growing by using fish that tolerate warm temperatures. The California projects differ in that they use rice fields during the winter to support species like salmon that need cooler water.