“Hi, I’m Sandy Denn and I farm rice with my husband, Wally, near Willows, California. I’m third-generation on this property raising rice and my son’s coming along to be the fourth generation.
I’m proud of what we’ve done over the years. We used to be worried about whether the rice was going to make it for weather. And we had tall growing variety so you know what they took? They took lots of water.
Well, we don’t have to use so much water anymore thanks to laser leveling. Thanks to fastidious efforts on the part of the rice farmer, we have valued our water to the point that we no longer have water, that when I was a child used to reach up over my my hips, and now it touches my ankle bone when I walk out in the field. That’s a big saving! Think about the inches of water in the acres of covering a rice field and what a conservation measure that has been over the years. It hasn’t been highly publicized, but I’m darned proud of it.”
