Rice is an extremely important product for farmers’ livelihoods and for food security in Myanmar. Rice is the main staple, accounting for 51 and 62 percent of urban and rural calories consumed, respectively, making it crucial for food security in the country. Large international changes in commodity markets and twin local crises – COVID-19 and political problems due to the military take-over – have raised doubts on the performance of the agricultural sector overall and the rice sector in particular. The assessment on farmers’ rice productivity during the dry season of 2022 presented in this research note is based on data from the Myanmar Agriculture Performance Survey (MAPS) that was conducted with 678 rice producers, spread over all states/regions of the country, over the period August 2022 – September 2022. Detailed questions were asked to farmers about their background, input use and input prices, farm management practices, rice output and output prices, and natural and other shocks during the dry season of 2021 and 2022.2 This blog post presents the results from that assessment.
You can view the full research note in English here.
Key findings
- Prices for most inputs used in paddy production increased significantly between these two growing seasons. Paddy prices at the farm also increased by 42 percent, much in line and even higher than some input costs, giving relief to most paddy farmers. In the monsoon season of 2021, paddy prices did not follow the increasing trends in input prices, jeopardizing incentives and profitability of paddy production.
- Rice farmers increased input expenditures on paddy production by 15 percent compared to last year. Most input use was similar to a year earlier, e.g., fertilizer use on paddy only declined by 6 percent despite a 51 percent increase in prices. Because of the relatively small declines in input use, only relatively small reductions are seen in rice productivity during the dry season of 2022 on farmers’ largest rice plot.
- The majority of farmers expect paddy production during the 2022 monsoon season to be lower this year compared to the previous year because of substantially lower fertilizer use. Prices have increased further due to the war in Ukraine. During the monsoon season in July 2022, urea prices were almost twice as high than a year earlier. This was coupled with worse weather conditions (especially higher incidences of floods).
- Farmers residing in insecure areas expect worse paddy production this monsoon as they reduced fertilizer use more substantially than the ones in more secure environments.
Recommended actions
- Paddy farmers are cutting back on fertilizer use. To assure further resilience of the paddy sector, farmers would benefit from support to their agricultural operations, potentially through agricultural cash programs and through expanded agricultural extension on the more efficient and appropriate use of fertilizer given the increasing prices and scarcity.
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.
