Farmers are seeking ways to fend off birds who are stirring up soil in flooded paddy fields in Ferrara province
An unusual bird is ravaging crops and infuriating farmers in north-eastern Italy: the flamingo.
Flamingos are relatively recent arrivals in the area, and have settled into the flooded fields that produce rice for risotto in Ferrara province, between Venice and Ravenna.
The birds aren’t targeting the rice seedlings but use their webbed feet to stir up the soil and snatch molluscs, algae or insects from the shallow water. The rice is collateral damage.
I don’t think it’s unspecified, it’s to keep weeds away. Using weed killing chemicals to kill off any plants in your field apart from the specially-weed-killer-resistant crops is super common in agriculture, and is terrible for the environment.
You seem to be against the idea of growing rice in flooded fields, can I ask why? It’s not like this is in some places like California that’s in constant drought.
Not OP but in addition to the water consumption you already mentioned, flooded rice fields also produce a lot of methane due to the oxygen-free conditions at the bottom and the abundance of organic material.
This could be mitigated if fields would be drained periodically.