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. 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.
Thus recessional agriculture serves as a rudimentary form of irrigation. This form of cultivation may have been the earliest form in the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain, as well as in the Nile Valley. 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
- "USAID: MDB Proposals: Africa". Archived from the original on 2011-06-06. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
- ^ 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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