The village has gone about 2 weeks without rain. This being the rainy season, this is a little unusual. However, it is not that unusual. One of the quirks of the rainy season on the floodplain is that sometimes there are dry spells. For me, as an academic, this is just another reason why farming systems on the floodplain are so fascinating– another occasional surprise which must be dealt with. For the farmers who depend on their rice harvests for their daily caloric intake, it is a much more serious concern. As of yesterday, the lack of rain was a point of discussion. Something which was starting to worry people, but no one I have spoken with was in a panic yet. There have been plenty of promising, black, rumbling clouds like the ones above. But these seem to keep dropping their payload elsewhere.
The rice crops most affected seem to be those most recently sown– the quick maturing rice varieties. These are popular. They mature in about 3 months, and are usually directly sown around this time of year. With the right nutrient management, attention to pests, and a little luck, yields can be higher than with other rice cropping systems used in this area. But the crop needs water. When farmers have the money, and a field located close to a canal or large pond, they may irrigate. However around this village, this is not very common. Thus many of these sites are dependent upon rainfall. So, dry spells early in the season can be very hard on the young plants.
The dry spell left a couple of obvious marks on the landscape. The most obvious is the yellowing, browning and ultimate loss of the newly planted rice. This is evident in the above images. The most recently sown seeds simply fail to germinate and are eaten by birds and rats. The second obvious mark is an increase in weeds, seen in the second image above. As the rice struggles, weeds which are better able to cope with low water levels begin to out-compete the rice plants. I am not yet sure how farmers are going to respond to this, assuming the rain begins again soon. One farmer reported that if they have the time and money, they will re-plow and re-sow the lost fields once there is a good, heavy rain. He did not mention anything about the people who do not have the money.
On the social side, the dry spell has led to a change in daily farming activities. This time of year is the plowing season, among other things. People began to plow the most distant sites several weeks ago. As the season progressed, sites closer and closer to the village are plowed and leveled. The dry spell has slowed this progression. Right now, the soil in many places is too dry and hard to plow. Moreover, many people are waiting to sow the fields which have been recently plowed, as the seed will simply be lost.
Though not everyone is waiting. Yesterday, I took the picture above of a newly sown field. Was it sown in anticipation of rain from one of the aforementioned promising clouds? Does the farmer know something about the soil at that site which I do not? Were they simply impatient? Desperate? I cannot hazard a guess, since I did not meet the landowner to talk to them about their rationale.
Some sites have not been as severely affected. Rice planted in and around poorly-drained depressions is able to take advantage of water remaining in the soil. The image below was taken steps away from the site of the second image, above. The rice in that depression is in much better shape than the rice planted on higher sites (the pattern of soil visible in that field is due to the planting pattern, rather than the lack of rain).
Use of sites like this is a good example of farmers’ appreciation for diversity in the landscape. At first glance, the floodplain seems pancake-flat. However, there are many scattered hills and seasonal ponds– some small, quite large. These create a multitude of microsites– banks, islands, gullies– which farmers can take advantage of. Plantings in and around these wet sites are doing a little better right now than rice on better-drained sites.
There are certainly more tools that people use to navigate the caprice of the weather. Deepwater rice varieties were planted in some ponds and swampy areas around the village months ago. These plants are larger and more mature, so they are not as sensitive to fluctuations in water supply. They also are planted in areas which stay wetter longer, further insulating them. Therefore, the deepwater rice fields have not yet been heavily hit by the lack of rain. I suspect that some of the other rice varieties used by farmers are more drought-tolerant than others. I still need to keep looking around and asking questions.
As I write, it has started raining here in town. This does not mean that any will fall in the village. But I hope that it does.
