They Paved Fields of Rice and Put Up a Solar Panel Lot 

Rice farmer LG Raun peered skyward through his windshield, engrossed in the gray-blue clouds agitating overhead. “Even if they say it’s going to rain, I usually wait for it to start raining before I shut the water wells down,” he explained. It was early spring, and we were touring his fields in El Campo, where he’d recently applied herbicides to his nascent crop, visible only as small spires of green jutting from the soil. LG explained that he needed to “flush” the land with water in order to properly activate the herbicides. The weather forecasters had been so certain of rain, though, that he had shut his wells off early; too much water could cause his levees to break.  His decision was born of instinct…

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