A thatched-roof house in the rural highlands between Hoa Binh and Mai Chau

This thatched-roof house in the rural highlands between Hoa Binh and Mai Chau shows a traditional style of farmhouse built of local plant materials. Young corn plants are growing in the foreground.Such small farmhouses can be built quickly from local palms, bamboo, and wood, then rebuilt elsewhere when highland crop fields are rotated to other locations with more fertile soil.Corn (or maize) is a crop that originally was domesticated from a wild plant in tropical Central America. After the Age of Exploration, when Europeans travelled by ship around the world, it was brought by European colonists from the Americas to Southeast Asia where it often grows well. Much of the corn in Southeast Asia is fed to poultry, but some groups eat it in addition to rice, or at times and places when rice is not available.