- Drought and restrictions on irrigation water meant a dire harvest for some NSW rice growers in 2020
- This year, the harvest is set to be 10 times that of last year, with 475,000 tonnes of rice expected to be harvested in the Riverina
- Sunrice, a major processor of Australian-grown rice, has employed 180 more people to help handle the harvest
"If you work on $2,000 a hectare, this year alone, we've put probably $1 million into the local economy,"Mr Cremasco said.
"[People] were scared obviously at that time that we were going to run out of food, so the importance of being able to look after ourselves has probably never been more valuable."
"If it can perform on a cold year like this, then we've got a very good, reliable crop."
"After two years of drought, we got to the point in time where we literally were running out of Australian rice, but thankfully with this harvest we can put the new season crop on supermarket shelves,"Mr Howard said.