Veterinary Science Collected Works - Research Publications
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ItemThe Duty of Professional Agriculturists(Asian Agri-History Foundation, 2010)This lecture to agricultural educators and officials uses dual meanings of key words as a mechanism to explain the deepest teachings of Buddhism in terms related to agriculture. It begins by interpreting the essential truth of and indeed the etymological origins of Dhamma as a duty and the performance of one’s duty. It uses the Thai word for nature to introduce the linkage between the Dhamma and responsibilities of everyday life as a duty because life may be considered as borrowed from nature. In this context looking out for oneself selfishly is seen as the opposite of moral or natural behaviour, yet it is recognised as the basis of current society and agriculture. Development of society, economy, and one’s spirituality are explained in terms of correct or unskilful development, with the conclusion that the primary duty of humans is their personal spiritual development to understand the true nature of all existence An analogy of life and rice cultivation includes introductory historical and contextual comment before relating spiritually-aware behaviour to traditional rice cultivation conducted communally to everyone’s best ability to provide a harvest of ultimate peace and calm.
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ItemLivestock and Food Security: The Relevance of Animal Science to the Hungry Poor(Asian Australasian Animal Production Conference, 2012)Livestock play a major role in basic food-security, which in turn is the first principle of national security and international security. Food-insecure populations emigrate and undermine precarious States. Even at the level of more luxurious food-security expressed in UN ideals, livestock products are critical. Outside single product industrial farms, livestock provide multiple outputs, including: high-quality protein; income; draught and traction power; nutrient recycling; various edible and non-edible by-products, and they reproduce themselves. Children and reproductive-age women, whose diets are deficient in amino acids not readily accessible from plant foods or in micronutrients, benefit significantly from even small amounts of animal protein, which globally makes up perhaps 28 percent of protein intake. In Asia, livestock production has increased markedly in recent decades, particularly from intensive systems in China as part of its planned food-security – an approach that provides lessons for smaller food-insecure countries. Future animal scientists and development planners will learn to balance such innovations with those of the West and move beyond routine European breeds and production systems to consider the livestock 3Rs – ruminants, rabbits and rodents that thrive on waste products and lands not suited to other forms of food production. They will make such contributions to food security as: animal production within city limits; periurban farms; industrial and home-based aquaculture; home-based rodent/rabbit hutches; contract-growers supplying cities; insect-protein units; huge capital-intensive operations with integrated market chains; non-agricultural foods, and more. For now, extensive ruminant grazing systems and small mixed farms seem likely to remain the most efficient production systems, although the majority of animal products that can be delivered to cities, where most of the world will live, will probably be from specialized intensive production, particularly of poultry and pigs. As animal scientists we do well to reflect on our ethical and technical roles, especially with respect to food security.
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ItemMusing on Agri-History(Asian Agri-History Foundation, 2013)
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ItemFood Security: The Contribution of Livestock(Chiang Mai University, 2015)
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ItemIntegrated Development: An Historical Insight of Our Time(Asian Agri-History Foundation, 2016)Integrated development is described, including definitions, origins, and its value as an improvement in development activities. Spanning all sectors, worldviews, environments and circumstances, integrated development is introduced as an ideal towards which responsible development practitioners and agencies are moving. As it encompasses all aspects of existence it necessarily includes spiritual and other esoteric considerations, which on the surface may not seem to accord with modern worldviews. By contrast, the paper shows that reflection on the ideal reveals it as the culmination of human insight experience and scholarship that is richly evident in Asian agricultural history.
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ItemShifting Cultivation: A Cautionary Note(Informatics Publishing Limited, 2018-09-25)