Recessional agriculture
Recessional agriculture, also known as flood retreat agriculture, is a form of agricultural cultivation that takes place on a floodplain. Farmers practice recessional agriculture by successively planting in the flooded areas after the waters recede.[1] Seeds are scattered on the fertile silt deposited by the receding flood. Similarly to how the fire deployed in slash-and-burn agriculture creates a field, the receding flood drowns all competing vegetation and deposits a layer of soft, easily worked silt as it recedes.[2]
Thus recessional agriculture serves as a rudimentary form of irrigation.[3] This form of cultivation may have been the earliest form in the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain, as well as in the Nile Valley.[2] Soil type is an important consideration in recessional agriculture. One type of crop grown by this method is sorghum. Clay soils are especially suitable for recessional agriculture.
References
[edit]- ^ "USAID: MDB Proposals: Africa". Archived from the original on 2011-06-06. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
- ^ a b Scott, James C. “The Domestication of Fire, Plants, Animals, and … Us.” In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, 37–67. Yale University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnfk9.5.
- ^ Kellman, Martin C.; Tackaberry, Rosanne (1997-01-01). Tropical Environments: The Functioning and Management of Tropical Ecosystems. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415116084.
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