Euronews.green writes that 42% of the world's methane emissions come from farming, while 8% of those are attributed to rice farming. Rize is a startup focused on working with smallholder farmers and company representative Siem Schreurs said that "we're really trying to get the right tech to the farmers and making sure they adopt this for longer periods of time."

The problem with cultivating rice comes from flooding the fields, which creates the ideal conditions for the development of certain organisms that release methane. A corelated issue is that over 3.5 billion people get 20% of their daily necessary calories from rice, driving up demand, which could in turn rise emissions.

Normally, cultivating rice requires continuous flooding of the fields, but Rize currently tests a new method in Vietnam and Indonesia, called alternative wetting and drying (AWD), where the fields are allowed to dry out before new freshwater is being added. This method has been proven to reduce methane emissions by as much as 50% and Rize scientists hope to increase the efficiency with further lab tests.

While the company's efforts have been proven successful so far, the team believes that larger companies should join in the effort, as well.

“We're a small agri-tech that's tackling a huge issue,” says Schreur. “There needs to be more force from a downstream perspective, meaning companies like FMCGs, traders, offtakers - the larger companies that are buying large volumes of rice.”