In recent years, Myanmar’s consumption of chicken and eggs has increased drastically. However, the demand for chicken suffered a double hit in 2020 – first from a salmonella outbreak in January, followed immediately by the COVID-19 pandemic. In their research, Peixun Fang, Ben Belton, Hnin Ei Win, Khin Zin Win, and Xiaobo Zhang utilize findings from a rapid phone survey to understand the challenges that poultry farmers have faced since the COVID-19 outbreak. They also provide policy recommendations to help poultry farmers maintain operations and adapt to COVID-19 challenges.
You can view the full policy note by Peixun, Ben, Hnin Ei Win, Khin Zin Win, and Xiaobo in English here and in Burmese here.
မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့်ရေးသားထားသော စာတမ်းအပြည့်အစုံကို ဤနေရာတွင် ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပါသည်။
The Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA) is monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. This blog post highlights one of the many recent surveys and policy notes that MAPSA has conducted to assess the emerging constraints that these key actors face and to mitigate the possible impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods and food security.
Additional blog posts are available highlighting MAPSA’s research on the impact of COVID-19 on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. Surveys are ongoing, and findings and recommendations will be periodically updated.
Background
Between 2010 and 2015, Myanmar’s consumption of chicken and eggs increased by 72 percent and 40 percent, respectively. Whereas the consumption of most other meats fell during this period, chicken had become the most common meat consumed in Myanmar by 2015. An important reason for this growth is that chickens and eggs were the only major animal-source foods for which real retail prices decreased during that period.
However, demand for chicken suffered a double hit in 2020 – first from a salmonella outbreak in January that reduced consumer demand, followed immediately by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To shed light on the impact of these shocks on this critical sector, MAPSA conducted a series of phone surveys with poultry farmers. This research seeks to help the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation of the Government of Myanmar and agriculture sector stakeholders to better understand the following topics:
- Challenges that poultry farms have faced since the outbreak of COVID-19;
- Adaptations and changes that poultry farms are making in response to those challenges;
- Input procurement and marketing activities, including quantities and price.
Reported effects of COVID-19 on poultry farmers
Demand for chicken and eggs from both households and businesses in the Yangon area decreased substantially since the COVID-19 outbreak began. Furthermore, in late March and early April, the Myanmar government ordered restaurants, hotels, and tourist areas to close their businesses. These shocks likely resulted in 24 percent of farms surveyed in 2019 closing their business in the past 9 months, with 18 percent temporarily closed and 6 percent permanently closed.
As displayed in Figure 1, the two main reasons for closing poultry farms were low market prices/not enough buyers and cash flow problems. Other factors, such as access to inputs, labor issues, disease, or government COVID-19 restrictions, were not substantial drivers causing farms to go out of business.
The closure of broiler and layer poultry farms also substantially decreased the supply of chicken and eggs. To cope with the initially reduced demand, operational broiler farms prolonged the length of production cycles and the intervals between cycles. The resulting supply shortage of broilers and the recent increasing demand due to lifted restrictions on restaurants then led to rising broiler prices in June. Thus, the production of operational farms is likely to return to normal or to higher than normal levels.
Though layer farmers were less likely than broiler farms to close their businesses, Table 1 shows that COVID-19 forced them to alter their business operations and expectations on costs and revenues. Around 85 percent of layer farms expect their revenue in 2020 to decrease compared with 2019. In contrast, a much smaller share of broiler farms expects revenue to decrease by more than 20 percent.
Additionally, over 35 percent of both broiler and layer farms expected their operating costs to increase in 2020 compared with 2019. With higher costs and lower revenue, it will be very challenging for some broiler and layer farms to survive.
Policy recommendations
Although demand for chicken and eggs is gradually returning to normal, poultry farms and the livestock sector overall need additional government support to recover from COVID-19 impacts. Based on the above analysis, Percy, Ben, Hnin Ei Win, Khin Zin Win, and Xiaobo offer four main policy recommendations.
- Providing temporary income support either based on a farm’s number of employees or sales last year would help operational farms buffer COVID-19 related shocks for several months and help some closed farms resume operations. This support should extend to both registered and unregistered farms and could fall under Action 2.1.7(b) of the COVID-19 Economic relief Plan (CERP) of the Government of Myanmar.
- Include livestock farmers as beneficiaries of government credit guarantee schemes, conditional upon maintaining or rehiring their workers. This would help livestock farmers ease their cash flow problems and to maintain their regular workforce. This measure could be implemented prior to any temporary income support measures and falls under CERP Action 2.1.2.
- Provide temporary tax exemptions or deferrals to livestock traders, input suppliers, and farmers. This would help livestock-related businesses to maintain their operations and lead to a stronger livestock market with stable supply and more predictable prices. Such measures fall under CERP Action 2.1.3.
- Logistic disruptions seem to be a smaller problem in the Yangon peri-urban area than in other areas. However, travel restrictions should be further removed for the transportation of livestock and livestock products across all regions in Myanmar.
Related blog posts
- COVID-19 and business responses: How are Yangon’s poultry farmers adapting to the pandemic? (July)
- COVID-19 and business responses: How are Yangon’s poultry farmers adapting to the pandemic? (Late-June)
Peixun Fang is a Research Analyst in the Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington, DC. Ben Belton is Associate Professor, International Development, in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University. Hnin Ei Win and Khin Zin Win are Research Analysts in DSGD of IFPRI, based in Yangon. Xiaobo Zhang is a Senior Research Fellow in DSGD of IFPRI and Chair Professor of Economics at Peking University.
This blog post was prepared by Michael Wang, Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow in DSGD of IFPRI, based in Yangon. The analysis and opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the authors.
