Rice work: Dutch test new crop to save sinking peatlands

In a soggy field between Amsterdam and The Hague, farmer Sander Roeleveld ploughs a small white combine harvester into his crops, gathering a grain never before harvested in the Netherlands: rice. The surroundings could scarcely be more Dutch. Canals criss-cross polders lying two metres below sea level. Windmills grace the horizon as cows — for centuries the country’s agricultural staple — graze in the nearby grassland. But the warming climate is allowing Dutch farmers to produce wine and now even experiment with rice, previously unthinkable in such a wet, temperate country. And researchers…