The salutary influence
Salutary influence of irrigationThai hydro-agriculture
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Irrigation S E Asian Agri-history 2005, Hist. Geog Dimensions India’s Interaction S E Asia, Hist. Geog Dimensions India’s Interaction S E Asia, Hist. Geog Dimensions India’s Interaction S E Asia
| 280 Salutary influence of irrigation Thai hydro-agriculture based on supplementary water supply Like the other southward migrants of Mongoloid stock who infiltrated different river valleys of the mainland, Thais too followed the river courses of Mae Ping and Chao Phraya (Menam) to reach the region which was named as Siam. Despite being the latecomers to Southeast Asia, Thais emerged as a dominant political power through their repeated raids on the lowland- based Khmer empire. Thais who deliberately wrecked the elaborate Khmer hydraulic system between 1350 and AD, had developed smaller scale waterworks in Menam basin (Hall, 1968). The lower form of hydro-agriculture, which was developed in the most fertile lowlands in the whole of Southeast Asia (Fisher, 1966), was essentially maintained by the local people rather than by the centralized political authority. In the absence of large storage facilities in the form of major irrigation projects until the beginning of 20 th century, crop-failure was a natural phenomenon especially during the years of subnormal flooding. Preponderance of wet rice cultivation, solely dependent on the supplementary water supply in the comparatively narrow river valleys of northern Thailand, was made possible by the irrigation techniques which the Thais brought with them from their original homeland in southern China. Further down the river valley, the rain-shadow effects imposed the dry conditions on the central plains. The average rainfall which was estimated to be only 41 inches (Fisher, scarcely met two-third of the water demand of the paddy cultivation and the remainder was met either from annual flooding or through building large distribution canals from Menam. The canal system also served as a device of water control and a means of water transport in the lowland deltaic region of Thailand. Unlike the settlement pattern evolved in the vicinity of water sources of the valleys of great rivers of the mainland, Satingpra settlement complex in southern Thailand E and 7° N) was not based on the natural drainage or water storage. The Satingpra peninsula, extending over 60 km in length and 15 km in width at its maximum, is located in a relatively dry area where it rains during only one season. These permanent agricultural settlements survived due to the exploitation of subsurface freshwater by a variety of means, namely, man- made ponds or tanks, canals, and wells. The Satingpra hydraulic works, as per the evidences obtained from the excavated sites by Dr Janice Stargardt of the University of Cambridge over 15 years since 1970, were capable of transforming the natural aquatic levels and converting low agricultural yields Download 158.72 Kb. Share with your friends:
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