Nobody is blaming rice farmers. Just stating facts that growing Clearfield rice varieties allows farmers to use herbicide mixes that effectively eliminate red rice and other moist soil plants in the fields. That technology wasn't available operationally 20 years ago. The resulting waterfowl habitat from the Clearfield regime is of much less quality than the habitat created by traditional rice farming.
On the flip side, many would argue that using Clearfield varieties allows many farmers to still still able to plant rice in areas where the cost of competition control or the amount of red rice made growing rice unprofitable.
Robbie aka Big Hutch
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