I have about 50 rai of farm land in Buriram . The land is mostly waterlogged and too wet to farm . Does anyone know an expert or consultant who can advise how to improve the drainage ?

Phil

31 minutes ago, Phil4x2 said:

I have about 50 rai of farm land in Buriram . The land is mostly waterlogged and too wet to farm . Does anyone know an expert or consultant who can advise how to improve the drainage ?

Phil

Rice fields ? 

If it is rice field, you can drain as much water as you want. The soil is still not suitable for most crops and it needs long time to upgrade the soil with amendments and green manure plants etc. 

The quickest and most suitable solution in my opinion could be growing bananas, coconuts or papaya in a raised bed canal system

I would say if were in Buriram it would be rice fields, as for finding an expert, not easy, a large mug of coffee and Google would be your main option.

Clw Ider is good I have seen this done a few times it works, but you have 50 rie to do a raised bed system would cost a lot of money, and 50 ria is a fair bit of land.

The problem is once a rice field is difficult to change over,a lot depends on the soil Heavy land would be more difficult to drain than light land.

If it is light land, a big chisel plough or a sub-soiler would help, which would open the land out and let water drain out; you might have to do it more than once.

The problem is finding one, sugar cane farmers should have one, then you need a tractor to pull it idealy it wants to be 90hp plus, pulling a minimum of 18-20 inches deep. 2 foot would be best  That would break up the underground pan and let the water drain though.

On heavy land you could use a French drain, plastic pipes with holes in,  this has come up on here before it is available, but not easy to find (or it was about 4 years ago), but the main problem with French drains is that the water needs somewhere to go , like into a ditch.

The chisel plough /subsoiler should do the job , but it needs to be done in the dry season, you would get a shattering effect underground, breaking up the soil ./

If it's din nieow/sticky soil and historically rice land, what about growing rice?

 

In my opinion there is need for good quality regenerative ag organic rice in Thailand and for export, because what I have experienced over the last 20 years or more is the degradation of the flavor of rice, even the best commercial hom mali, just doesn't have that aroma and flavor anymore.  This is most likely due to the economics for farmers, and soil fertility depletion and void in nutrient density that goes along with chemical farming. There are some organic rice farmers in Thailand, I went to an organic rice growers fair in Yasothon a few years ago, but "organic" for most growers just means reduced chemical pesticide use, and not necessarily optimum soil and plant health and nutrient density building. Therefore most rice is just empty carbs and tasteless dietary filler. Just add more chilli I guess. 

 

If anybody is growing quality organic jasmine rice with soil-food-web, regenerative ag priniciples and practices, I would love to know about it and sample some. 

 

Here's an interesting reseach paper from Laos on soil types. 

https://linquist.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk6581/files/inline-files/Saito et al 2006c.pdf