1. The four case studies under discussion cover four different rice-producing regions--the Iban culture, the Bang Chan in Thailand, the United States, and Japan. The two latter countries are very different from the two former in terms of levels of industrialization and modernization, and certainly Japan and the U.S. have more advanced technologies at their disposal than do the Iban or the Bang Chan, who are still engaged largely in subsistence farming with hand implements. For the Iban and the Bang Chan, rice production is very labor intensive and employs nearly every person of any age in the village or local community. While it might be presumed that production could be improved with more technological solutions to the problems of rice production, this does not seem to be the case. Rice production has to be labor intensive to be productive, and reducing the human labor involved through mechanical means reaches a point of diminishing returns. This is one of the reasons yield rates for the United States are lower though the technology is greater. The U.S. uses more advanced technology even than Japan. In Japan, the primary energy sources are humans, animals, the tiller, and the thresher. In the United States, the primary energy sources are humans, animals, the tractor, the grader, the combine, and the airplane. At the same time, the seed to yield ratio is high for the U.S., which shows that the method of planting must be more effective for some reason.
Technology seems therefore to have a greater effect on the productivity of the land than on the productivity of labor after a certain point. This may relate to the particular elements of rice production or to better care of the rice-producing land. Diminishing returns are also reached in terms of the way technology affects the production of a surplus. The surplus is higher for Japan than for the United States. The most efficient system is still that of the Iban, as can b...