ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Drying the Paddy Fields: Temporality and Epistemic Transformations in Climate Adaptation

• In Event: Plural Epistemologies and The Role of Time in the History of Waterscapes

English Abstract

Among the many threats of climate change, drought looms large as a problem in paddy rice production. Good yields for market-dependent farmers in wet-rice systems are normally dependent on well-controlled access to water to keep water and land in optimal relation to each other. Rice paddies produce both rice and environments friendly to birds, fish, and other semi-aquatic organisms. Unpredictable drought threatens yields, livelhoods, and the complex synergies that have made rice production viable and valuable in diverse contexts. This paper uses the problem of drought in rice paddies to explore the epistemic collaborations and conflicts that inform the process of transforming existing solutions to periodic or cyclic agricultural problems into climate adaptations. In the 1970s, scientists at IRRI began experimenting with the alternate wetting-and-drying technique, an approach to reducing the use of water on rice paddies during El Niño events by as much as 30%. As a more widely used answer to drought than much-hyped genetically engineered rice varieties, it offers a valuable case for thinking about climate adaptation in ways that don’t privilege innovation. This paper will explore the origins of the alternate-wetting-and-drying technique in IRRI and among Southeast Asian farmers who used methods like this as a response to the problems of cyclic drought. What epistemic collaborations and conflicts have reshaped the logic of this technique, reimagining it as a tool for the temporally distinct challenges of drought in a warming climate? And how may this in turn affect the complex relations between water and land in wet-rice cropscapes?

Author

• Suzanne Moon, University of Oklahoma