Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (25 page)

The economic growth of a country not only improves human development; it also creates opportunities for widening people’s choices. For an agricultural country like Myanmar, development strategy will obviously have to focus on agriculture. Agricultural development and a rise in agricultural productivity can be achieved through agricultural education, research, and extension, but above all, funding and investment from local and international sources are needed.

About 75 per cent of the total population resides in rural areas and is principally engaged in the agriculture, livestock, and fishery sectors for their livelihood.
²
In order, therefore, to improve the HDI for Myanmar, improvements in the rural HDI, which reflect rural health, rural education, and rural economy, will be required.

The key players for achieving this are the government, the opposition, ethnic groups, urban and rural people, agricultural entrepreneurs, international investment companies, and aid organizations. For more than fifteen years Myanmar has not received significant assistance from the international donor community for the agriculture sector. Lack of such investment has been the main weak point in rural economic development.

Myanmar is a country of 676,578 square kilometres (measuring approximately 925 km from east to west, and 2,090 km from north to south) and is located between 92°10’ and 101°11’E longitude, and between 9°32’ and 28°31’N latitude. The population is 52.4 million (2003) with an annual growth rate of 1.84 per cent.
³

The agriculture sector contributes 45.1 per cent of GDP, 18 per cent of total export earnings, and employs 63 per cent of the labour force. As mentioned above, three-quarters of the total population resides in rural areas and is principally engaged in agriculture. In 2001–02, 15.8 million hectares was utilized for various crops; the reserve forest covered 13.9 million hectares, with 19 million hectares of other forest area.
⁴

Rice is the staple food of Myanmar and the sown area in 2002–03 was 6.48 million hectares, with an average yield of 3.42 tonnes per hectare. Myanmar usually produces over twenty million tonnes of rice per year, and is the seventh-largest producer of rice in the world. It also has the highest rice consumption of any country in the world, at 211 kilograms (kg) per head per year.
⁵
Rice consumption for Thailand and Vietnam are 101 kg per head per year and 170 kg per head per year respectively, indicating a reduction in the consumption of rice due to the availability of alternative staple foods. Reduced rice consumption is also an indication of the level of economic growth of a nation.

Myanmar is rich in water resources. Annual rainfall ranges from 750 mm in the alluvial lowlands of the central region to 1,500 mm in the eastern and western mountains and to 4,000–5,000 mm in the coastal region. Only 6 per cent of the total surface water resources of 1,081 cubic kilometres per annum are being utilized at present. The total ground water potential is approximately 500 cubic kilometres per annum. Three parallel chains of forested mountain ranges run from north to south separating the country into three main river systems: the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy (2,170 km long) and its tributary the Chindwin (960 km); the Sittaung (298 km); and the Thanlwin or Salween (1,274 km). The total area of the fertile valleys between these rivers covers 50,000 square kilometres. In 2001–02, the area of irrigated land was 18.8 per cent of the net sown area. In 2002 the total number of dams and reservoirs was 628 (including 146 major dams).
⁶

These data indicate the vast land and water resources of Myanmar, which are the two major requirements for agricultural development.

At present, agricultural development in Myanmar has three main objectives:

•   to achieve a surplus in paddy (rice) production;

•   to achieve self-sufficiency in edible oils;

•   to step up the production of exportable pulses and industrial crops.

For a developing country like Myanmar, food security is the key to peace and stability, and the foundation for economic development. Rice is the most important crop in Myanmar, therefore it is the driving force for the development of the nation. Although there has been an increase in rice production, this increase seems to be lagging behind population growth, with the result that there is a shortage of rice, especially when the weather is unfavourable.
⁷
Besides rice, improving the production of other food and industrial crops and related agro-based industry is the key to solving problems such as rural unemployment, rural poverty, associated malnutrition, and rural-urban drift.
⁸

Food security strategies adopted by Myanmar include:

•   transforming wasteland into new cropping land;

•   expansion of irrigated cropping area;

•   increased use of high-yielding varieties, quality seeds and technology;

•   increased use of farm machinery;

•   encouraging entrepreneurial skills and innovative abilities of farmers.
⁹

Reducing poverty calls for rapid economic growth that is aimed at helping the poor and that is based on efficient competitive markets. There should be a balanced division of responsibilities between the state, the private sector, and civil society. Myanmar potentially has the physical capability to match Thailand as a dominant rice exporter, but its progress has been restricted by a lack of fertilizers, lack of access to quality seed, lack of appropriate agricultural machinery and skilled farm labour, and the limited amount of capital available for farmers.
¹⁰
Without international trade and investment, progress towards achieving food security will be slow.

Agriculture plays a significant role in Myanmar’s national economy, and further development will depend on the level of national and international investment. Recently the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MOAI) adopted a policy and strategy of allowing freedom of choice in agricultural production and encouraged private sector participation in commercial crop production. It remains to be seen whether the policy will be
implemented in every State and Division. It should also be noted that unless the amount of foreign direct investment increases significantly, progress will be slow. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for Myanmar at US$0.14 billion is small compared to US$3.2 billion for Indonesia and US$4.6 billion for Malaysia.
¹¹
A considerable amount of this investment is going into the agricultural sector, but the full potential production is still not being realized.

The success or failure of sustainable agricultural development depends on effective and appropriate agricultural education, agricultural research, and agricultural extension, all of which will in turn depend on effective macro-agricultural policy and market-oriented agro-based industries. These three areas of development must be well coordinated in all projects. Agricultural projects should cover not only cropping but also livestock and fishery development, since most farmers are involved in all three areas.

In Myanmar, there are ten agricultural high schools, seven state agricultural institutes, and one agricultural university (Yezin Agricultural University or YAU). Few students have the opportunity to attend university, and due to inefficient performance, low student enrolment numbers, and shortage of teaching staff and farm facilities, some of the agricultural high schools have had to close down. Students would be encouraged to remain in agricultural high school and state agricultural institute courses if the curricula contained more rural-based vocational agriculture, animal husbandry, and rural craft. Better education will not only support better rural economic growth but will also counter the drift of rural youth to urban areas.

The enrolment in state agricultural institutes is satisfactory because there are opportunities for the graduates to get jobs within the government, and also the option for entry into higher agricultural education at YAU.

Formal education in agriculture, along with the agricultural research farms, started in 1914. Agricultural education at college level began in 1924, with the establishment of the Burma Agricultural College and Research Institute at Mandalay which offered a three-year diploma in agriculture. The first agricultural degree course was offered in 1938 at Mandalay University. Under an initiative of UNDP and the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Agriculture Faculty was moved to Yezin in 1973 and established as Yezin Agricultural University (YAU). The first postgraduate course was offered in 1978.
¹²

As YAU is the only centre of higher learning in agriculture, every effort must be made to improve and update its resources and its funding for capital and operating expenditure. The annual capital expenditure allocated to the University, which has 197 teaching staff and 1,300 students, is insufficient for such an important institution, especially for the teaching facilities there. The University has highly-qualified, internationally-trained staff but most of them are now in their fifties and near retirement age. One good incentive would be to extend the retirement age for academics. There are also a significant number of well-qualified and enthusiastic younger staff, and every effort should be made to nurture them to become the leading educators and researchers for the future. It is perhaps true that agricultural education has not suffered as much as other sectors in terms of the decline in quality of education being provided, but without a substantial increase in investment, the risk is that it will fall behind international and regional standards. Considerable injection of funding is urgently needed from international organizations for improving the library facilities and laboratory equipment, and for consumables.

Yezin Agricultural University has the potential to play a pivotal role in agricultural development in Myanmar. It has the basis to link with international organizations to enhance technology, and it must also lead the training program for regional agricultural research and advisory staff.
¹³

A developing country like Myanmar does not have the time or money to engage in a “theoretical knowledge hunt” in agricultural research. Agricultural research must be farmer-driven, involving participation by farmers and collaboration between researchers and farmers who are looking for practical solutions to their problems. Agricultural research should also focus on improving the productivity of the crops that the poor consume most. Researchers using new agricultural technologies need to target the areas where the largest numbers of poor people live.
¹⁴
It is important for researchers to be aware of the interaction between the new technologies and rural livelihood assets such as human capital (farming knowledge, education, available labour, etc.), natural capital (water, land, forests, soil
fertility, etc.), financial capital (credit, insurance, savings), physical capital (tools, roads, water-pumps, etc.) and social capital (neighbours, local farmer organizations, etc.).
¹⁵

The agricultural research institutions in Myanmar operate under the Myanmar Agricultural Service (MAS), which in turn comes under the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation. The major research centres are:

1.   Agricultural Research Department (ARD). It is the core research department for research in Myanmar. ARD has nineteen research farms and fifteen divisions of research activities including rice, other cereals, legumes, farm machinery, seed bank and plant pathology.

2.   Vegetable and Fruit Research and Development Centre (VFRTC). It conducts research and germ plasm collection of fruits and vegetables.

3.   Yezin Agricultural University (YAU). The research activities of the university are related to postgraduate programs and significant amount is done in collaboration with ARD.

4.   Other government departments, which are responsible for individual crops such as cotton and sugarcane, also have research and development programs.

Agricultural research in Myanmar is centrally planned and managed, which puts constraints on achieving profitable returns, but the MOAI is looking into restructuring for a better model.

Collaboration and the dissemination of research information between different departments need to be opened up. Because crop production, crop processing and storage come under the supervision of different ministries, there is a need to have a common forum for the exchange of ideas. The Myanmar Academy of Agricultural, Forestry, Livestock and Fishery Sciences (MAAFLFS), which is an independent group of retired agricultural scientists, plays an important role as a medium for such collaboration. Its activities would also benefit enormously from much greater interaction with international experts in these areas, and its leadership is keen to proceed in this direction.

Myanmar’s research organizations have a number of agricultural, livestock, and forest research projects which are funded by international organizations such as FAO and UNDP, universities from Asian countries, and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
At present ACIAR is financing two projects in Myanmar, one on rodent control and another on Newcastle disease in poultry (see
Chapter 7
).