In the photo, people are dredging canals so that the low-lying households can get water into their fields. The canals must be dredged three or four times a year.
Thai people have grown wet rice for a long time. Since I can remember, I have seen all the households growing rice. Thai people in Mờn village have grown both wet and upland rice since ancient times. Upland rice is now rarely planted. Farmers switched to maize and fruit trees because of the low yield of upland rice. There are two crops of wet rice: one crop planted in March and harvested in June, and the other planted in July and harvested in October. There is only one crop of upland rice, from May to October.
The land area is unchanged, but the population is growing. So, the land is transferred among households to grow rice every five years. If the land area is small, many households don’t collect enough rice to feed the family and have to buy extra rice. For every 1,000 square metres of land, farmers collect 25 bags of rice or 30 bags if they take good care of the crop. After the harvest, straw is dried in the fields and then brought home to feed cattle and compost with manure.
Narrator and photographer: Lường Văn Yêu (Thai ethnicity, 46 years old)