The scope for sustaining and developing farmingbased
livelihoods is also evident in the three villages
surveyed in Sang Thong district where a new pump
irrigation scheme feeds the fields of between one quarter
and one third of households, permitting them to cultivate
a second rice crop. Indeed, the history of these villages
since the mid-1980s shows the dissemination of a series of
agricultural innovations and support infrastructures
which have all contributed to a relatively vibrant local
agricultural economy (Table 2). Partly as a result, land
remains a strategic resource defining, in most cases, the
haves and the haves not. Established patterns of life and
work have not been unduly disturbed or compromised
and the agricultural cycle continues to determine the
pattern of non-farm work, rather than vice versa. Productivity
growth within agriculture, to a significant extent,
is meeting villagers’ growing needs.