Spain, Ebro River - 360
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Ebro river delta: the broadest river delta in the Mediterranean (after the Nile), one of the most important wetlands in Europe, fully covered by rice fields, except the coastal lagoons around the delta full of water birds. Water increasingly polluted by agrochemicals. An NGO has bought a piece of land, for 3 years tried organic rice, finally got it based in and improving the traditional knowledge rescued from a few old people who worked the rice fields before the fashion of agrochemicals in the 1950s. Advantages of the organic rice: twice the price and many more birds, plus water quality allows aquaculture; now the NGO has created a social enterprise to commercialise it (this is a challenge for them), profits reinvested in more research and education. Local forces, always suspicious with all these "conservationists", particularly big landowners who happen to deal agrochemicals in the region, begin to understand.