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On the Lundburg family's rice farm

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Instead, the valley all around the Lundbergs’ fields was on fire. At harvest, the threshers strip the rice stalks of their seeds, leaving the stalks (the chaff) behind in the field. After harvest, most farmers burn a portion of the chaff. On this clear October day, it looked like the Tuesday after Armageddon, heavy clouds of gray smoke rising off the valley floor.

But down the center of the valley in the midst of the burning landscape were clear green patches, amazingly free of smoke: the Lundbergs’ fields. I pointed to them. “No burning?” I asked into the roar of my headset.

Wendell eyed me a moment. “Why waste mulch?” he asked back.

Most farmers see the chaff as a source of disease. The easiest and cheapest way to get rid of it and help protect next year’s crop from disease: burning. In response to air-quality concerns, California passed a law in 1991 limiting the amount of chaff rice farmers can burn to no more than about 25 percent of their crop. That legislation has decreased air pollution from burning rice fields, but in a valley with as much rice production as the Sacramento, it’s still enough to create the heavy clouds I saw all around us.

The Lundbergs take a different route, and see chaff as fertilizer for next year, an organic source of nutrients that also helps, by its decomposition, keep the top layer of soil from turning into cement in the California sun. So rather than burning, after harvest they turn that chaff right back into the soil and then plant cover crops for the winter.

Wendell banked the Cessna again. “Had enough?” he asked.

I nodded.

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