Australia's Drought-Busting Water Grid In the driest continent,
saving water means spending watts Trevor Hill stands knee-deep
in water at the edge of his rice field. He reaches down with a
weathered hand, plucks a green stalk, and carefully cuts a slit
along the stem. He coaxes out the delicate strand of pale green
rice kernels and then holds it up to the sunlight. It’s still
more than two months to harvest time, but to his eye the crop
looks good. The rice fields on Hill’s farm in New South Wales,
Australia, form an emerald expanse that stretches to the
horizon—until you turn around. Across the dirt road, the land is
brown and bare. In wetter times, he’d plant rice on nearly a
third of his 412 hectares; this year he has enough water to
irrigate just 44. Like many local farmers, he’s hired
contractors to smooth out even the slightest variations in his
fields’ topography, and he uses satellite imagery to diagnose
the health of the soil, measures designed both to reduce water
consumption and boost production.