The Global Taste
Southeast Asia highly adored rice as the central source of calories and dominant symbol of nurture, where in fact it is primarily rice agriculture which is the primal use for making noodles, rice flour and even rice wine. The largest exporter of rice is Thailand, for having about eight million metric tons, followed by Vietnam with four million metric tons, but there are still some parts of Southeast Asia, where rice will not be easy to cropped, for it still depends on the climate of a country, some parts of SEA is a tropical country- only two climates can be experienced- summer and rainy seasons, such as Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Indonesia, while some have four seasons- Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring just like China, Korea, and Japan.
Liu in 2019, in the journal of Washington University in St. Louis, affirmed that prehistoric food globalization spanned in three millennia, where peasant farmers began transforming diets across the Old World, 7,000 years ago. Just as how technology we used everyday and evolved for a great progress, foods have also evolved on leveled up, not just in serving and cooking style, but more importantly, on how the primary foods being cultivated and supported especially when it comes to rice as it was the staple and primary food of Southeast Asians.
There are varieties of the cultivation of rice - one of those is the irrigated wet rice which are more productive but just as how productive it was, it rely on canals and terraces and other works that require intensive labor techniques in order for it to be fully flourished. Also, another variety is named as Dry rice that usually grown in upland, some other rice varieties are rain-fed lowland rice and deep-water rice and can be found in the region.
Meanwhile, the rice distinction varies between Glutinous and Non-glutinous rice. Glutinous has a very different cooking property from the other distinction. It absorbs a little water when it talks about its cooking and is usually steamed, it is usually consumed by the collective identity of the lowland Lao, north-eastern and northern Thai, and groups of Vietnamese and listed it as their essential food, they often used it for making desserts, rice flour, and rice wine. The other, the non-glutinous rice is often used for medicine, gift exchange, for selling but both can be grown also in the regions of Southeast Asia depending on the climate system.
Furthermore, the food globalization during the pre-historic times was driven not just by the exotic appetites of the ruling elites, but more distracting is due to the relentless season-to-season ingenuity of the farmers as they seek the new ways in putting food for their tables, whereas, Liu (2019) struggles that the pre historic food globalization had a dramatic impact for the food cultivation in the Old World. Before 5000 BC, the early farming communities sprang up in isolated pockets of fertile foothills and stream drainage basins. Between 5000 and 2500 BC, there was a crop compatible in weather systems. In between the 2500 and 1500 BC, the mastering of the cultivation of grains had evolved to furnish in the extreme elevations.
Research development reformed its focus to another route that will drive the food globalization process and these developments were played by the primary agents of agricultural production. One of the strategies is the trial and error approach specially in overcoming climatic challenges. But after all the convictions and affirmative responses brought by globalization, the whole process for the prospect of new trends is not just an adoption but can be also a rejection, just like what a Chinese saying said, what has been long united will fall apart, and for what has been long divided, it will come together eventually.
