Balance and Imbalances in Village Economy: Access to Irrigation Water and Farming Systems in the Chao Phraya Delta 1 Francois Molle, 2 Thippawal Srijantr 3 and Lionel Latham 4 Paper presented at the 8 th International Conference on Thai Studies 9–12 January 2002 Ramkhamhaeng University, Nakhon Phanom 1 This paper draws from a research report The impact of the access to irrigation water on the evolution of farming systems: A case study of three villages in the Chao Phraya Delta (Molle et al.; 2001b) , part of the research project Water Management, Land Development and Economic Diversification in Southeast Asian Deltas funded by the European Union (INCO-DC). For more details: www.ku.ac.th/delta. 2 Researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), francois.molle@ird.fr. 3 Lecturer at Kasetsart University, agrtws@ku.ac.th. 4 Junior Assistant, IRD.