The Origin, Spread and Persistence of Glutinous Rice as a Staple Crop in Mainland Southeast Asia

Various students of Southeast Asian agriculture have been at a loss to explain the peculiar distribution of glutinous rice as a staple crop throughout northern and northeastern Thailand, Laos, and neighbouring regions of Yunnan, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia (see map).1Moerman has observed that, “Although this crop … helps to define and isolate a continuous culture area of about 200,000 square miles, it is given scant and inaccurate mention in the literature on rice.”2He goes on to suggest that certain “environmental factors” have probably played an important role in establishing glutinous rice in this area.3This environmental explanation of origins is echoed with equally little elaboration by Watabe,4but the latter denies that physical geography alone can account for the continuing preference for glutinous rice over modern non-glutinous varieties of comparable suitability. He contends that the persistent cultivation of glutinous rice, “is primarily due to an acquired preference of traditional use in the local diet.” Moerman5and others have recognized the inadequacy of dietary preference as a sole explanation for persistence, but have so far refused to proceed beyond environmental speculations, even though they have provided a wealth of relevant ethnographic data.