Novara, Italy — Massimo Saronni walks across his rice field, each step a loud crunch. This field should be flooded with water, flourishing with four-foot emerald green blades and golden rice ...

high temperatures and drought have almost erased the yield of more than 26,000 hectares of rice fields between the provinces of Pavia and Novara and caused an unprecedented yield loss in the other ...

His fields are nothing but desolation, with rice stems slowly dying in the sandy ground ... stretching west from Pavia in Lombardy to Vercelli and Novara in Piedmont. Vicini said the area's last ...