

It’s incredible. For uncounted generations, farmers who till some of the world’s most productive soils have left land fallow for months after harvesting a single crop of rice. Between cropping seasons, they just waited for the next rains. Stupid? Lazy? Far from it. Few farmers are smarter and none work harder. But there was simply nothing they could do. The soil, once drained of the water that nourished their rice, became as hard as rock, totally impenetrable.