Lindsay Falvey จรัญ จันทลักขณา
Thai agriculture is traced through prehistory, agro-cities, and religious empires with immigrant Tai, to a sustainable wet glutinous rice culture which shaped institutions for an exporting society. Agriculture's provision of security and wealth increased with population and Chinese and European agribusiness, until accessible land was expended. Employment, crisis resilience, self-sufficiency, rural social support, and culture were maintained through agriculture, although hampered by institutional orientations to taxation more than research and education. By the 1960s, agribusiness contrasted with small-holders. Thailand is one of the world's few major agricultural exporters, leading in rice, rubber, canned pineapple, black tiger prawn, and regional chicken meat production and export, and feeding four times its population from less intensive agriculture than its neighbours. Issues remain in poverty, education, research, governance, national debt, and sensitive alternatives for small-holders. Past specialties in irrigation, administration, export, multinational agribusiness, negotiation, retained potential, and acceptance of new ideas, suggest that Thailand should remain a major agricultural country as environmental and religious concerns contribute to its unique agriculture. From hunters and gatherers through agro-cities, State-religious Empires infiltrated by migrating Tai persons with a wet glutinous rice technology, evolved to produce a sustainable agriculture. Rice culture determined administrative structures in a pragmatic society which regularly produced a saleable surplus. Ayutthaya’s ascendancy, continuing today, consolidated the importance of rice agriculture to national security and economic well-being, as Chinese and European influence benefited agribusiness and initiated the demand which would expand agriculture through population increase until accessible land was expended. The resulting central interest in the spoils of agriculture more than its producer
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