Irrigating the fields

A bamboo water wheel is used to irrigate rice fields at Mai Chau. (Learn more)

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Wet-rice farming requires that plants stand in water during early stages of their growth. The water then must be drained away before the rice fully ripens for harvesting. Bamboo wheels such as the one shown here aid this process of water management in places where the slope of the land does not allow good water movement to occur only with gravity and dikes that can be opened and closed for drainage between adjacent fields.

The current of the stream turns the large wheel. Curved bamboo slats set at the circumference of the wheel lift water from the stream and, as the wheel turns, dump water into a bamboo pipe that leads to another field needing water.

Learn more about Mai Chau, Vietnam, farming, highlanders, hill tribes, irrigation, rice, rural life, technology, water wheels, and wet rice.

Definitions

dike n.
An artificial earthen wall, constructed as a defence or as a boundary.
adjacent n.
Next to something else.

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