Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed gives an indication of which kinds of cultivation are able to be best exploited by authorities: legible monocultures, easily recognisable as such, and which can harvested all at once, stored, and transported. In SE Asia, that meant padi cultivation. States actually tried to mandate it so as to squash the more ungovernable types of cultivation, which included swiddening, with crops such as upland rice, maize, barley, and root vegetables. When pressure from states was high, anarchic people might switch totally to foraging to escape.

I don't agree with the traditional primitivist stances on agriculture and think they are excessively inflexible. We could restate them, not as stances but as statements. For instance, foraging for one's food (including perennial cultivation) can increase personal freedom and independence, and is less easily appropriated by states.

Death to ideology!