White Gold: The Commercialisation of Rice Farming in the Lower Mekong Basin by Rob Cramb

Author:Rob Cramb
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811509988
Publisher: Springer Singapore

The Rice-Growing Environment

Cambodia encompasses a distinct physiographic region within the Mekong catchment referred to as the Tonle Sap Basin, beginning in southern Laos just above Pakse and spreading out into an extensive plain in central Cambodia, bordered on the east, north, and south-west by mountain ranges (MRC 2017). The dominant tributaries entering on the left bank are the Se Kong, Se San, and Sre Pok Rivers in Stung Treng and Rattanak Kiri Provinces in the north-east. The Tonle Sap River flows into the Mekong on its right bank at Phnom Penh, but famously reverses flow in the wet season to accommodate the floodwaters from upstream, expanding the size of the vast Tonle Sap Lake six-fold to about 25,000 km2. Below Phnom Penh the Mekong branches into the Bassac River, its major distributary, thus forming the beginning of the Mekong Delta. Of Cambodia’s total land area of 181,035 km2, 86% lies within the Mekong Basin, forming 20% of the entire catchment. Only the coastal region to the south-west of the Cardamom and Elephant Ranges lies outside the Basin, draining into the Gulf of Siam.

Rainfall in the lowlands varies from 1250 to 1750 mm annually, with a distinct but erratic wet season (WS) from mid-April to mid-November, followed by a five-month dry season (DS) in which rice cannot be grown without some form of irrigation (Nesbitt 1997a). Hence most of the rice lands support only a single rainfed WS crop, accounting for about 87% of the annual cultivated area (MAFF 2013). In some areas around the Tonle Sap Lake and close to the Mekong floodplain which are inundated in the WS, deep-water or floating rice is grown. Some of the floodplain areas are only used for DS rice, which is planted as the floodwaters recede. Upland rice is of limited importance.

Rice soils in the lowlands are of two broad types (White et al. 1997). Those of the old alluvial and colluvial plains account for 67% of the lowland rice area and are generally light-textured soils of low fertility used for rainfed WS rice. Soils in the active floodplains around the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong and Bassac Rivers account for 30% of the rice area. These soils are heavy-textured and fertile, being formed from fresh alluvium deposited by annual floodwaters. They are submerged for three to five months of the year and are commonly used for deep-water rice and recessional/irrigated DS rice.

For millennia, the Cambodian population has been dependent on rice cultivation, concentrated around the Tonle Sap and the south-eastern lowlands. Rainfed lowland rice remains the mainstay of the rural economy. Cambodia’s population was 16 million in 2017, of whom almost 80% resided in rural areas, most engaged in rice farming and other livelihood activities. About 91% of the population is of the Khmer ethnic group. Minorities include Vietnamese (3%), concentrated in the Delta to the south-east, Chinese (1%), and Cham, Lao, Tai, and other groups (5%). The population growth rate in 2017 was 1.6%, down from a peak of 3.9% in 1984.

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