Recessional agriculture

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 formerly flooded areas after the waters recede.^[1] 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.^[2]

Thus recessional agriculture serves as a rudimentary form of irrigation.^[3] This may have been the earliest form of cultivation in the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain, as well as in the Nile Valley.^[2] 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.