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 WP 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!

At the request of Refuter, here are some fish.  Actually, I do not have any images of the ones caught by the kids behind the house.  These were caught in a gillnet which was stretched perpendicular to the current, along the border between a rice field and a pond in a completely flooded landscape.

When the heavy rains hit the mountains in the neighboring province a few weeks ago,  all of this water flowed downhill into rivers and onto the floodplain.  Many people have lost at least a portion of their rice crops, because this wash of rainwater came about a month early.  So in many fields, the rice was not yet tall enough to withstand the flooding.  Next year, many families in the village will have problems both with having enough rice to eat, as well as seed for planting.  Ironically, there has been little rainfall the village itself.

This early flood also brought a flush of riverine fish out onto the floodplain, into the waiting nets of fishers.  For a week or so, harvests were pretty good.  However, the water level has since dropped and fewer fish are moving from the rivers onto the floodplain.  Catches are now generally small, both in the total weight of the catch, as well as the average size of any one fish caught.

The water under the house from my earlier post has drained, so the kids have taken their fishing elsewhere.

ifocus and Details are Sketchy have posted a bit on some newspaper coverage from the 2007 Clogger Summit. Give it a read!

This past week, I took a couple of days off from my work up on the floodplain to come down to Phnom Penh for the Cambodian Blogger Summit. I had a great time! This event featured two days of presentations and discussions focusing on blogging, ranging from the technical (e.g. an introduction to podcasting) to the more theoretical (e.g. envisioning the role of blogging and the internet in Cambodia in the future). I met a lot of neat folks, and learned a bunch too.

One of the particularly inspiring aspects of the conference was that it crystallized out of the efforts of the Cloggers Team– 5 young Cambodian bloggers who are so motivated about the medium that they developed Personal Information Technology Workshops which they then voluntarily facilitated at 14 universities and high schools. To date, they have taught over 1700 students about blogging, Khmer Unicode and related topics– all on their own time, driven by their own passion. I have immense respect for the DIY spirit of this crew, and am grateful for their efforts. Plus, they put on a great conference.

In light of the fact that part of my reasoning behind this blog is to share some of Cambodia with people abroad, I am going to start pointing you towards other blogs about Cambodia– other people, other themes, other ideas. Check them out– they are a refreshing change from my usual, “How about this fence…” kinds of posts.

As an appetizer, I will refer you to the blogs kept by the members of the Cloggers Team. All Cambodian, all quite different, all fun reads…

Joke 4 Everyone!– He’s got jokes! But he writes in Khmer, so you need unicode installed to read it.

Ms. K.– She’s in the U.S. on a Fulbright, but joined us at the Clogger Summit via the magic of webcam.

DeeDee, Schoolgirl Genius! Khmer Cyberkid– She just graduated high school in Phnom Penh. (Congratulations!)

Someone: a dreamer– Named after a brand of soap, he writes a lot about personal development.

KhmerAK– A self-avowed Phnom Penh geek. Plenty of fun techie topics.

So check them out and see what they have to say. I’ll post more links in the coming weeks and months…

And, thanks to Preetam Rai for making his image of the summit (above) available on Flickr under a Creative Commons 2.0 License!

Over the course of my project here in Cambodia, one activity which has sucked up a lot of time is the accumulation of spatial data, ranging from paper topographic maps to digital orthophotos. These are invaluable for general thinking about land use, as well as developing landscape histories, which are an important aspect of my research project (as well as not getting lost!). One sort of data which I have yet to properly assemble, are locations of government land and fishing concessions to private individuals, companies and communities.

However, a post from Details are Sketchy drew my attention to Alt.Map.Cambodia. There, one can find Google Maps of fishing, mineral and agricultural concessions (like the map above), documents dealing with border negotiations, and more miscellaneous geographic information. An excellent resource!

Alt.Map.Cambodia subsequently pointed me to the Danida-funded Cambodia Atlas project. The website features an interactive Java-powered map of Cambodia, which allows users to modify which information is displayed on a base map of Cambodia (i.e. which layers of the GIS are active). It includes layers for forest cover, UXO and land mines, community fisheries and much more. Fun to play with. According to the site, this is part of the effort to get this data into the public domain, which is a good thing. However, I am not sure if they are making the datasets available for download so that we can actually use them in our own spatial analyses. That would be a really good thing.

A month or so ago, I posted about an article discussing some tips for writing about Africa which I had learned about from a post by Maytel.

The article inspired a little venting on my part, but nothing overtly constructive.

Well, as proof that procrastination really can be constructive, Maytel has revisited the problem and prepared some suggestions for writing about Cambodia. Check it out.

In a seeming last gasp from her supposedly euthanized blog, Maytel points to a really neat essay with great tips about how to write about Africa.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Why is this pertinent? As with Africa, journalists covering Cambodia seem to suffer from the same need to trade in stereotypes, and fascination with timeless peasants (either caught in primordial rice-farming village purity or, struggling in the present day unable to escape the trauma of the Pol Pot Regime). While these certainly do represent certain facets of the country, they overlook a lot.

Doubtless there are plenty of exceptions to this criticism. I try to cast a wide net, but likely miss a lot. I just had to vent a little bit. I am also a little late to the table in this discussion, as the links in Maytel’s post reveal. Check it out for broader coverage of the issue.

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.

It seems to be roof repair season in the village.

Over the last week, I noticed that many households in the village were cutting down sugar palm (Borassus flabellifer L., ដើមត្នោត) leaves for the preparation of roofing shingles (ស្លិកកន្ដប). This is not a simple process. First, leaves are cut down. Older leaves are taken, leaving a tuft of newer leaves on the top of the tree for continued growth. I find the cutting to be a daunting task, as the trees grow up to 30m tall. No one else here seems to have a problem with that, as the trees are regularly clumb for palm sap collection. The trees themselves are quite common in the Cambodian farm-scape, and are often found along field and property borders.

Cut leaves are then left for about a day to dry, or until labor can be mustered for the next step. Then, the laminae of the leaves are liberated from the massive petioles (which are set aside for use in other projects, like fencing and cordage preparation– an example is in the background of the picture below, with petioles used to construct a duck coop). The next step is splitting the palmate leaves into individual fingers, each with an intact central vein. This adds structural strength to the individual blades. The intact leaves themselves are very large, so they are first split into managable portions (primal cuts). Then a machete or sharpened wooden wedge (in some cases, made from a piece of petiole) is used to split the fingers apart, nearly down to their base, leaving a fasicle of several leaflets. At this stage, small leaves or severely damaged leaves are culled.

The base of each fascicle is then trimmed off with a hatchet or machete. Once trimmed, individual blades are bundled, and left in a shady spot to cure further. These bundles are later opened, and individual blades flattened. Management of leaf moisture is very important throughout the process, as leaves which are either too dry or too wet are difficult to work, and may lead to a weaker shingle.

For the shingles themselves, leaves are folded in half over a bamboo splint (ពុះដើមឬស្សី) ​of about a meter long. They are added individually, so that each overlaps the next. The blades are then sewn to each other, using one row of stiching up near the bamboo splint. Finished shingles are then soaked in a pond for around 3 months– until they turn black. After soaking, they are dried, then washed and dried again. At this point, they may either be used for roof construction or stored in a shady spot until they are needed. As roofing material, they can last several years. Sewn, but unsoaked, shingles may be sold to itinerant merchants for about US$0.02. These are then sold in town. The child pictured here has since sold this batch and started another pile.