[Crowberry]

It’s not a new technique as i understood it from the article. It was just abandoned by the introduction of fast growing hybrid rice. Nonetheless it’s very interesting the experiment has not been done before, couldn’t have been discovered at a better time!

“Lansing, an ecological anthropologist, has studied Indonesia’s rice fields since he arrived in Bali in 1974 to work on his Ph.D. His focus was subak, a rice irrigation system managed by water temples, which had been in place since the 9th century until it was disrupted by the arrival of the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Like their counterparts across the globe, Balinese farmers were encouraged to swap slow-growing local varieties for fast-growing hybrid rice, fertilizer and an extra harvest.”

[Terr_]

I think the flooding of the paddies is also related controlling weeds and pests.

So the viability of the technique may depend on other technology or resources being available, compared to peasant farmers of the past.