A
Agrarian Civilization
Nearly exclusively
based on rice growth in flooded paddy fields, several South-Eastern
Asiatic societies gave birth to what is usually called the "rice civilization".
In this case, the word civilization includes social phenomenons (religious,
moral, esthetic, scientific, technical) common to a big society or to
a group of societies.
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C
Continuous agriculture
This word is used
when a field was cultivated every year non stop with periods of fallow
land of various time length. Multiple agriculture is referred to when
the same field is cultivated several times a year.
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D
Rural Demography
Quantitative study
of human rural communities with their variations. Relatively stable
up to the beginning of the XIXth century, the Javanese population increased
rapidly up to the early eighties. The average demographic density (rate)
on the Java island grew from 219 inhabitants per km² up to 818 in 1990.
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Division of labour
The division of
labour is an economical organization defining which task is made by
whom, bringing a professional qualification of workers. Due to the surplus
in rice production, some families could get qualified in hand craft
production. Thus families of potters can be found on the archeological
sites , mainly in South-Eastern Asia.
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G
Green revolution
This denomination
is used today as referring to the introduction of new cereal varieties
( wheat in 1950 and rice in 1960) and of agricultural techniques providing
high yields. The rice varieties for a short cycle of growth, which were
invented by the IRRI in the Philippinas, allowed to get two crops a
year. In order to reach their high potential, the new varieties needed
high input of fertilizers and pesticides and a performing irrigation.
In Indonesia, the success encountered with the Green Revolution comes
from the introduction of these new varieties as much as the capacity
of the government to promote the new techniques, to restore the irrigation
network, to organize the credit and to provide technicans to the farmers,
to support investment in pesticides and fertilizers, to stabilize the
rice price and to controle the commercial network.
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I
Irrigation
The need of water supply for
rice growth is lower than one can think in general. In South-Eastern Asia,
the main problem in irrigation is to keep up with a covering water surface
enough to prevent the weeds to invade the paddy fields. Moreover, the
mineral supply for rice is better in a wet environment. Very often, irrigation
is used as water supply only for the dry season cultures.
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O
Community organization
In order to build and maintain
in good condition important networks such as irrigation, it implies the
participation of the whole community. In the famous Balenese irrigation
system called "subak", each area of the village is responsible for the
maintenance of its part of the irrigation network. Every person who would
try to derogate from this obligation would be rejected by the community.
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Rainwater agriculture
Rainwater agricutlure as opposed
to irrigated agriculture, is referred to when the only water supply used
for the plant growth is the natural rain.
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Rice growing
Rice is an annual
graminae which grows under tropical and temperate climate. It is a basic
food plant for a great part of the world. It can grow either in wet
paddy fields or in rain seasonal conditions. In South-Eastern Asia,
the rain seasonal rice growth concerns mainly a culture on burned soils
with tree planted fallow. A permanent rice growth in rain seasonal conditions
is not much in use since the peasants neither controle the weeds nor
can they maintain the fertility of the soils. On the contrary, the wet
paddy fields are in favour in many ways according to the origin of the
water and its level of control. One use to talk about:
- an irrigated paddy field, when the level of water if perfectly controled.
- A paddy field in "impluvium" or in shallow lands, when the of the
rice comes from the water of the rains accumulated in the lower parts
of the lanscape.
- A flooded paddy field when the field is located beside flooded banks
or in regularly flooded large river low lands.
- A mangrove paddy field when irrigation and drainage is done by the
ebb and flow of the tide.
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