Abstract

Rural life, culture, and heritage in Thailand are treasured assets of traditional Thai farming communities. The integrated components of culture heritage and agricultural tradition provide potential for promoting traditional farming activities, developing attractive tourist destinations, and conserving villages’ local identities. This research employs systematic approaches to investigate the local assets of cultural heritage and agricultural tradition, analyzes the aptitudes, aspirations, and capacities of local communities, and assesses the conservation sensitivities of local farmers. The results and findings are applied to make recommendations of three strategies for cultural heritage conservation, agricultural tradition conservation, and community-based agritourism development. Rich local agricultural tradition and culture heritage combined with eco-tourism in the rural landscape, a self-sufficiency philosophy, and sustainable agriculture practices, make agritourism development in these rural villages promising. Developing agritourism through community involvement with all stakeholders is key to empowering the agricultural community while helping to conserve local cultural heritage and agricultural tradition for a sustainable tourism destination.