mandevu.net

First, let me apologize to my three readers for the length of time between posts. I have been busy with fieldwork, and have not had time to write new posts. On the bright side, this post is the first to include video of some of the farmers who I am working with. The video embedded below is a montage of the steps involved in preparing the seedbed for a rice nursery, from which seedlings will be later transplanted to other fields. This also illustrates one of the solutions some farmers have used in response to the early flooding in August.

embedded by Embedded Video

And the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPlYTx8wb2I

By way of background, in August of this year there was heavy rainfall in the mountains of eastern Kampong Thom and adjacent Preah Vihear Provinces. This flowed downhill and out onto the floodplain, flooding many of the rice fields around the village where I work. Such flooding is a normal part of annual ecosystem processes– flood waters from the uplands flow downhill while floodwaters from the Tonle Sap rise. They usually meet and mix on the floodplains south of the village. This flood pulse is a major factor in driving such a productive system. Land use systems in the village depend upon it. However in this case, the floods arrived about a month early. The water rose very quickly, over just a few days. As a result, rice plants were not yet tall enough to survive the flooding. Even other floodplain grasses such as Oryza rufipogon, important as sources of fodder for livestock, were affected. That first pulse has since receded, and was followed by another pulse of floodwater. Though this second pulse of flooding was on-time, the damage had already been done.

Farmers were, and still are, in a difficult position. Next year is likely to be a difficult one. In response to this flooding, I have seen a few strategies which they are using to mitigate loss. Some farmers have borrowed unflooded, uncultivated land from extended family members and planted another crop. Some are preparing to plant dry season rice in a few months. Others lack seed or resources to buy/borrow seed for another crop, and are waiting for the floods to recede to see how bad their situation is. Signs of coming foreign aid are starting to appear, though I do not yet know how much, who will receive it or who is sending it . A few farmers are using the technique of flood recession rice production. In this technique, as floodwaters recede, the newly revealed land is planted to a rapidly maturing rice variety. The farmer in this video had transplanted his fields 3 days before the early floods. Little of the crop survived, though the few individual plants which did survive were transplanted elsewhere (another crop recovery technique!). As the water drained, he traded seed with another farmer for a more rapidly maturing variety (maturing in about 70 days, as opposed to the 90 or so of the previous variety) and re-established a nursery. Since this video was made, we planted out the seedlings at 3 different sites. He and is family also have rice fields further out on the floodplain which remain flooded even today, and have not recovered. Though this technique may help to buffer his family in the coming year.

The steps illustrated in the video are: plowing, harrowing, baling water from the field with a snaich (water shovel), final seedbed preparation by hand and lastly, sowing of the rice seed. They are pretty typical of the farming techniques which I have seen used by other farmers in the area. What is novel about them is their timing with respect to the flooding and other ecological and agricultural processes. His brief commentary at the end of the clip describes these steps (I ask those more fluent in Khmer than I to forgive any mistakes in my translation)…

Farmer: Today I started by building a snaich (water shovel), an old-style snaich. When I finished with the snaich, I plowed and I harrowed [the field] in order to sow flood recession rice. This flood recession rice, I traded with someone [for the seed], the name [of the variety] is Srauv Chhlong Ndaing. So today, I started a crop of flood recession rice.

Me: Yes, and why did you change rice varieties?

Farmer: The reason that I changed rice varieties…last month I had already sown [a rice crop] and it had grown tall, I had pulled the seedlings from the seedbed and transplanted them already, then when the river water arrived everything was flooded. The variety that was flooded was called Srauv Romdoul. All of my property has been flooded.

This is the first video which I have ever put together. I am hopeful to include a few more, and am especially keen to teach some farmers how to use the camera. I think that their movies would be more interesting than mine!

Lastly, massive thanks to Beth Kanter and Jinja for technical support and encouragement in this new video stuff!