Thai
Agriculture: Golden Cradle of Millennia. Kasetsart University Press
(international distributor, White Lotus), Bangkok. 490Pp (2000)
สินด์ซีย์ ฟาลวีย์ (2548) การเกษตรไทย: อู่ข้าวอู่น้ำข้ามสหัสวรรษ. จรัญ จันทลักขณา (บรรณาธิการ), แม้นมาส จันทลักขณา และคณะ (ผู้แปล) สำนักพิมพ์มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์, กรุงเทพฯ. 476 หน้า.
This publication is available in both Thai and English.
Summary
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.
