 In Southeast Asia, most rice fields use up to 3 times more water than the amount needed and suffer 5-10% lower yields and reduced milling output and quality from an even maturing, all because most rice fields are not properly leveled. A well-leveled rice field is crucial before planting your crop. It leads to even crop growth and ripening, uniform water coverage, which means savings in irrigation water and fewer weed problems, all leading to a healthier crop, maximum yield, and even better grain quality. Traditionally, most farmers in Asia use draft animals and two-wheel tractors that drag harrows and leveling boards across the flooded fields to level their land. An ideal way of leveling rice fields is through laser leveling. Laser leveling for rice is slowly emerging in some Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos PDR. With laser leveling, a laser transmitter placed at the side of the field sends a laser beam to a laser receiver, which is attached to a leveling bucket drawn by a tractor. The control panel or box mounted on the tractor interprets the signal from the receiver and opens or closes the hydraulic valve, which raises or lowers the bucket. The bucket then drags and drops soil across the field to make it even. The laser receiver signals the adjustments of the leveling bucket accordingly to ensure that the height distance between the soil and the laser signal stays the same, making the soil as leveled as possible. Laser leveling can be done in dry fields, thus saving valuable water for growing the crop. Farmers can do laser leveling during the dry season or when the crop has not grown yet. The International Rice Research Institute, with support from Trimble Company, introduced laser leveling for rice in Vietnam in 2003 by providing equipment and training to the Bac Lieu seed center and Nong Lam University. The Bac Lieu seed center has a network of farmers who grow seeds. For laser leveling of these areas, farmers pay 50% of the cost, while the government covers the remaining 50%. Since their fields were laser leveled, farmers from Yadai district of Bac Lieu have been enjoying many benefits. Mr. Dang Van Khan observed that households that got their fields laser leveled now have better livelihoods and are able to buy the things they need, such as pump equipment, TV sets and motorcycles. Such is the case of Mr. Pham An Lax family, whose lives have changed quite a bit from simply earning a few additional Vietnamese dong per hectare. Farmers in An Giang province are also now experiencing similar benefits of laser leveling. Nguyen Van Hans and Nguyen Thi Diep's field was the first field laser leveled in An Giang in 2006. It took only two days to level their 4-hectare field using laser leveling, while leveling 0.3 hectare using a buffalo used to take them 3-4 days. With a well-leveled field, they now use a drum seeder for direct seeding. Before it took them 30-person days to manually weed their unleveled 4-hectare field. Now that they use a drum seeder that plants seeds neatly in rows, weeding takes only four days using a row weeder. With their leveled land, fertilizer is spread evenly, resulting in less lodging. Golden applesnails, which used to hide in uneven spots, can no longer do so. They have reduced their fuel for pumping water from 20-30 liters of diesel to only 7 liters for all 4 hectares. They saved even more water from adopting alternate wetting and drying, which allows them to alternately flood their field at times and let it stay dry for a few days. Tran Van Dai, a farmer who is part of the one-must-do 5-reductions program in Anjong, is also reaping the rewards of a well-leveled field as he applies the best practices taught in the program. Nguyen Loiduc, a progressive farmer from Triton District, Anjong, borrowed the laser-leveling equipment from Nong Lam University, bought his own tractor and laser-leveled all of his 150-hectare rice field over the last three years. Seed production, he says, has higher value. Since then, his yield has increased by 0.7 ton per hectare and his income by 30%. In the future, he plans to build more mechanical flatbed dryers and seed-processing equipment. Dr. Van Nguyen, eerie post-harvest consultant, estimates that, in Vietnam, about 300 hectares of rice fields have been laser-leveled, with more than 200 hectares in the Mekong Delta. Now, with an urgent need to ease the labor shortage, by using agricultural machinery such as combined harvesters, laser-leveling is being reintroduced in neighboring Cambodia. In November 2011, the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium and the Eerie Asian Development Bank Post-Harvest Project organized a laser-leveling demonstration at the Don Bosco School in Batambang Province. Almost 100 extension workers, farmers and students attended the event. The goal is to increase rice production and the Royal Government has just put in place a new policy to improve rice production and also to export mill rice on our own. We have to have what we call appropriate farm management techniques that will range from land preparation to harvesting the crop. For the policy to be successfully implemented, farmers will have to come back to the technology like laser land-leveling, as it is one of the many options or solutions to achieve that goal. With combined efforts from national partners and a renewed vigor to promote the technology, farmers in Southeast Asia will benefit from laser-leveling and the many advantages it brings.