Myanmar's agrifood system is central to the country's economy and to the livelihoods of most of its population, having historically accounted for roughly almost half of GDP and two-thirds of employment. Since 2021, the political crisis, intensifying conflict and insecurity, climate shocks, and a major earthquake have placed the system under sustained and compounding stress. Drawing on evidence collected between 2021 and 2025, this paper provides a snapshot of where the system stands following this period of crisis and identifies opportunities for strengthening its resilience going forward.
Private sector actors have been central to sustaining the agrifood system's resilience since 2021. Input retailers have maintained the physical availability of fertilizer, seeds, and agro-chemicals, even in insecure areas, while mechanization service providers have continued to supply labor-saving services through flexible payment arrangements. Private agribusinesses have absorbed the contraction in formal credit, now accounting for roughly three-quarters of fertilizer credit sources, and have become the dominant providers of extension, both in-person and digital. These actors are operating under significant financial stress, but they have sustained farmers’ access to inputs, services, credit, and advice during a period when these would otherwise have likely collapsed.
Input costs have risen significantly since 2022, with agricultural wages, mechanization costs, and fertilizer prices all rising substantially. Farmers have responded by partially shifting toward lowercost production practices, including direct seeding, which carries an estimated yield penalty of approximately 15 percent compared to transplanted rice. Promoting appropriate agricultural technologies in conflict- and climate-affected areas requires targeted attention, particularly for smallholders and more remote households. Sustaining and expanding development assistance alongside humanitarian assistance will be important to support the transition toward more productive and sustainable farming systems, with scaling domestic production of organic soil amendments and expanding mechanization services.
Agricultural extension use rebounded to 38 percent in the 2025 dry season, with the private sector now the dominant provider and digital channels expanding rapidly. Given persistently low and unequal access to extension services, more inclusive outreach combining targeted in-person support in underserved areas with strengthened digital delivery is needed, with particular attention to women, less educated, remote, and conflict-affected farmers. As agrochemical distributors dominate both inperson and digital advisory services, promoting high-quality agronomic content and ensuring clear separation between technical advice and product promotion is important. The rapid expansion of digital platforms creates opportunities but requires investments in digital literacy, content quality, and monitoring systems to assess impact. Partnerships between digital platforms and large firms could also support traceability and quality requirements for export markets.
Formal credit access has declined sharply since 2021, with the share of farmers receiving credit during the monsoon season falling from 60 percent in 2020 to 43 percent in 2023, and dry season credit dropping from 48 percent in 2021 to 31 percent in 2025. Despite this contraction, agribusinesses, particularly input retailers, remain dispersed throughout the country and represent the most tractable near-term opportunity for expanding farm credit provision. Strengthening agribusiness access to seasonal working capital would expand their capacity to extend credit to farmers, and bundling credit with complementary supports such as market access, extension, and possibly insurance is likely to yield stronger outcomes than credit provision alone. Targeted credit guarantees and partnerships with civil society organizations that work with farmer groups could derisk lending in underserved areas, with crop insurance for specific high-value crop segments representing a longer-term opportunity.
Markets have continued to function, with agricultural exports increasing from approximately USD 1.9 billion in 2019 to USD 3.8 billion in 2024, due in part to higher international commodity prices and greater formalization of exports. Marketing and processing margins have widened significantly, with the farmgate paddy-to-retail rice price ratio falling from 0.50 in 2021 to 0.33 in 2025. Maintaining secure mobility, predictable trade policies, and macroeconomic stability remains critical for the functioning of agricultural markets, and investments in rural infrastructure, especially all-season roads in remote areas, are essential to reduce spatial price wedges. Support to value chain actors through improved access to finance and reliable energy services, including alternative energy options, would help mitigate cost pressures, and strengthening food safety systems and investments in traceability are increasingly required to meet stringent export market requirements. Investment in alternative processing methods for perishable foods and in value chains for low-weight, high-value products such as spices and dried fruits could expand market access for producers, including those in conflict-affected areas.
Food security and nutrition outcomes remain a concern, with roughly 2 million people facing moderate or severe hunger, 16 percent of households having borderline or poor food consumption, and the cost of diets nearly tripling since April 2022. High prices for healthy foods, combined with poor diet indicators in the West, Southeast, and Northeast, signal a need to strengthen distribution and retail networks for affordable, nutritious foods. Across Myanmar more broadly, diets remain heavily concentrated in staples, indicating scope for the development and marketing of affordable nutrient-dense foods. Investments in local production, aggregation, storage, and transport, particularly for perishable foods, could improve the availability of healthy foods in low-access areas, and where market access remains challenging, supporting households to produce their own nutrientdense foods through crop diversification and home gardens could play an important complementary role. Supporting local production of therapeutic foods, currently procured internationally, would create a market for nutritious food production.
Conflict and insecurity have produced significant variation in how the agrifood system performs. Farmers in insecure communities face input prices 1-6 percent higher than those in more secure areas, are 7-15 percentage points more likely to report labor shortages, and are 11 percentage points less likely to access in-person extension services. Mobility constraints limit mechanization service providers' ability to deliver timely services and traders' ability to move goods to market while rising transport costs and storage concerns contribute to widening price gaps between farmers and consumers. Food security and nutrition indicators follow a similar pattern, with hunger, poor food consumption, and inadequate dietary diversity all significantly more prevalent in the most conflictaffected regions.
Inclusion in the agrifood system is uneven across multiple dimensions, with smallholders, less educated farmers, women, and those in remote or conflict-affected areas facing reduced participation across credit, markets, extension, and dietary outcomes simultaneously. Inclusive approaches that account for these overlapping characteristics are important for reaching the groups whose participation remains most limited.
Strengthening agrifood system resilience over the short and medium term involves working through channels that are already functioning, with private sector actors having shown themselves to be effective conduits for sustaining farmer access to inputs, credit, and extension. Bundling support across multiple constraints simultaneously tends to yield stronger outcomes than addressing any one constraint alone, particularly where credit, extension, and market access can be brought together. Continued monitoring and evidence will be important to inform engagement over time. The resilience the agrifood system has shown since 2021 provides a foundation that the private sector can build on, with external partners playing a complementary role through facilitating investment, sharing risk, and supporting innovation in conditions where conventional approaches may not apply.