In March 2022, Researchers from the Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA) interviewed more than 540 active rice millers to assess business disruptions and price changes at the midstream of Myanmar’s most important agricultural value chain.
You can view the full research note in English here.
Introduction
Rice mills are the major link between farmers and consumers in the rice value chain. Any severe disruptions to rice mills will affect both rural rice-producing households and urban customers. MAPSA has been monitoring the impact of COVID-19 and political instability on rice millers in Myanmar with a panel phone survey since June 2020. In this research note – the eleventh note in the rice miller series – MAPSA presents the results from telephone interviews with 543 rice millers conducted between 21st February and 30th March, 2022, including 1) milling disruptions caused by the political crisis; 2) changes in operations such as hired labor, throughput, paddy and rice storage, and working capital; and 3) year-on-year changes in paddy, rice, and byproduct prices.
Disruptions to rice milling
In the March 2022 survey, we continued to ask millers a series of questions on different types of disruptions faced in the 30 days prior to the interview to better evaluate the effects of COVID-19 and political disturbances over time (results in Figure 2). Overall, fuel and electricity disruptions are the most common. About 80 percent of modern larger mills reported having difficulties accessing electricity and fuel. Many traditional smaller mills are run on diesel generators, and nearly 90 percent reported disruptions from high prices of fuel in March. Fuel access was a large disruption for both mill types. Modern millers require transportation for both the paddy input and rice output and were thus more severely affected by rising transportation costs (65 percent) and transport restrictions and curfews (35 percent). Among those millers reporting transport disruptions, the most common restrictions were check points (35 percent), special permissions (27 percent), and fees (23 percent). Most of the restrictions were at the state/region (75 percent) and township (60 percent) levels.
To further evaluate these challenges, we asked millers to identify which group of disruptions they considered to be the most significant. With frequent power outages and rising fuel prices since the start of 2022, electricity and fuel are now overwhelmingly the largest disruptions for both mill types, overtaking banking which dominated throughout 2021. Disruptions related to banking are still a challenge, particularly to medium and large mills who conduct more purchases and sales.
This blog post highlights one of the many recent surveys and research notes that MAPSA has conducted to assess the emerging constraints that key agricultural actors face and to mitigate the possible impacts of COVID-19 and recent disruptions on rural livelihoods and food security. Additional blog posts are available highlighting MAPSA’s research on the impact of disruptions on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. Surveys are ongoing, and findings and recommendations will be periodically updated.
