N.Z.-funded weir has helped poor Thai farmers

Press, 1 October 1983, Page 17

N.Z.-funded weir has helped poor Thai farmers

Thailand’s poorest region, the north-east, accounts for about a third of the land area of the country and a third (about 17 million) of the population. Per capita income averages about $4OO a year. Subsistence agriculture is the basis of the region’s economy, with rice its mainstay. The 16 provinces of the north-east occupy 170,000 square kilometres, an area a little larger than New Zealand’s South Island. NEVILLE PEAT, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs information officer, visited the north-east recently and reports, in words and pictures, on New Zealand assistance with water resources development.

Farming in north-east Thailand pivots on the arrival of the monsoon.

When the rains are late or fail altogether to arrive the rural poor of the region, which means most of the people, face even poorer times. Subsistence becomes a fight for survival.

The monsoon was late again this year. In a dry year the north-east’s two million farming households will be lucky to have any produce to sell after the family is fed. In paddy-rice country, water is everything. However; it is a case of too much too quickly, in a normal monsoon season. Farmers trap what they can in the paddy fields and watch the rest drain away, wasted.

Yet irrigation experience is not lacking. For centuries the farmers of the north-east have trapped rainwater within paddy walls, dug lateral canals to spread river water, and built weirs of earth and timber. In recent times they have built in reinforced concrete.

Nonetheless a huge amount of water gets away. Weirs which are poorly sited and poorly designed, even reinforced concrete ones, may wash out within hours in a flood.

In two provinces of the northeast, farmers are beginning to see what well applied engineering practices can do to help conserve water.

The approach is village-level and relatively small-scale; the expertise New Zealand.

At the request of the Government of Thailand the New Zealand Government is making rural water resource management the centrepiece of its bilateral aid programme in Thailand. The project is setting out to build weirs and other structures which will improve irrigation and water storage in Chaiyaphum, 300 km north-east of Bangkok.

A team of three New Zealand engineers arrived in Chaiyaphum in March to begin work on a construction and training programme estimated to cost $l.B million in New Zealand aid funds over four years.

Before the first showers came in June (harbingers of a monsoon that turned out to be weeks late) three concrete weirs were built under the team’s supervision in various parts of the province. The benefits could be seen in adjacent paddy areas, newly flooded and planted in rice, and in an improved fishery. Fish breed prolifically in northeast waterways, especially the deeper waters stored behind weirs. Considering the unseasonally dry weather, fishermen living near the new weirs had never had it so good. More widespread irrigation benefits would have to await the arrival of the monsoon.

The Chaiyaphum project expands on the example of small-scale water resource development going on in the adjacent province, Khon Kaen, where New Zealand has also been providing assistance.

Khon Kaen University’s engineering faculty is the base for an extension project which serves both as a training exercise for students in low-cost, small-scale technology and as a way of making farm and village water supplies go further. Since 1978 when a New Zealand engineer, Brian Worboys, of Wellington, went to Khon Kaen, the project has helped build about 45 weirs, installed pumps and pipe lines, and developed appropriate, improvised technology for and at the request of villagers. In 1981, the year before Mr Worboys completed his assignment, another New Zealand engineer joined the Khon Kaen project. Christchurch-born Evan Mayson completed his two-year bilateral aid assignment last month and handed over to the Thais and a Canadian volunteer engineer. For the $600,000 investment in New Zealand capital and technical assistance, the project has made a considerable impact on rural development in Khon Kaen over the last five years. A similar impact is expected from the new Chaiyaphum project. New Zealand is funding the three engineers and part of a construction budget to which the Thai Government is also contributing. A Hamilton consultancy, Murray North International, was commissioned under the bilateral aid programme to assign the engineers and supervise their work. In consultation with Thai agencies, the New Zealand engineers

will design and supervise the construction of up to 30 water resource developments a year, including weirs.

The team comprises Messrs Worboys (seconded from the Ministry of Works and Development for a year) as team leader, Ken Simms, a construction engineer, and Warren Wheeler, a design engineer. An important part of their work will be handing on skills and technology to Thais, including village officials and tradesmen. In the Khon Kaen project the villagers themselves formed a pool of volunteer labour, with the aid funds paying only for the materials and technical supervision. At Chaiyaphum there is a different approach. Local contractors do most of the work — a source of paid

employment for the villagers, who also stand to gain from the development. The largest of the three weirs so far built is at Ban Non Song Puai. About 10 villages are benefiting from this weir by an increased supply of water for irrigation, fishing, livestock and domestic use. The 40-metre-wide concrete weir and associated earthworks took 10 weeks to complete and cost about $40,000. It was one of the two schemes visited by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Cooper, in June during an official visit to Thailand.

Chaiyaphum is a province which has not received as much development assistance but suffers as much as other areas of the northeast from unreliable water supplies.

“By putting in weirs on small streams close to villages rather than, say, a huge dam, the farmers can manage the water resources and the maintenance themselves,” says Mr Worboys. “What’s more they are structures which won’t fail an hour or two after the first flood.” In Chaiyaphum, as elsewhere, farming is intensive on small holdings. Individual families have access to little more than two hectares on average. At best it is a tenuous undertaking. If the monsoon is late or fails to arrive, the ability to store water over the sixmonth dry season becomes critical. With New Zealand’s help, the farmers of the north-east can strive for that elusive resource — a reliable water supply.