To understand the effects of political instability and related shocks on Myanmar’s agricultural input sector, we conducted a phone survey of 187 input retailers throughout the country in August 2023. Key Findings • Fertilizer and pesticides were generally more available in 2023 monsoon than in 2022, though seeds were less available. More input retailers reported higher fertilizer sales in 2023 compared to pre-pandemic sales in 2019. Also on a positive note, the share of input sellers reporting low input demand dropped in 2023 compared to 2022. • Nominal fertilizer prices remain high in 2023, but sales have increased and prices relative to rice prices decreased 50 percent for urea and 38 percent for compound compared to 2022. • The percentage of input retailers reporting transportation disruptions has declined over the past 12 months, but 66 percent of retailers still report higher transportation costs. • Import challenges are now the most significant disruption to input retailers’ businesses, increased more than sixfold from less than 5 percent in 2022 to 30 percent in 2023. Fifty six percent of input sellers could not acquire at least some inputs. • More retailers reported purchasing and selling inputs on credit in 2023 compared to 2022 and demand for both credit in and credit out remain high. • The input retail sector has generally experienced growth in fertilizer sales over the past 10 years. Competition has also increased with 92 percent more input sellers in retailers’ village tracts or wards in 2023 compared to 2013 and 27 percent more relative to pre-COVID levels. Looking Forward • Higher fertilizer sales and decreased transportation disruptions in each agro-ecological zone relative to last year are positive signs for 2023 monsoon crop production. • However, unpredictable import processes and foreign exchange regulations could negatively affect input availability in the upcoming seasons. • More input retailers reported challenges with recovering credit lent out to farmers, and more farmers were buying inputs on credit in 2023 compared to 2022, indicating that farmers are still cash constrained.

Myanmar has endured multiple crises in recent years — including COVID-19, global price instability, the 2021 coup, and widespread conflict — that have disrupted and even reversed a decade of economic development. Household welfare has declined severely, with more than 3 million people displaced and many more affected by high food price inflation and worsening diets. Yet Myanmar’s agrifood production and exports have proved surprisingly resilient. Myanmar’s Agrifood System: Historical Development, Recent Shocks, Future Opportunities provides critical analyses and insights into the agrifood system’s evolution, current state, and future potential. This work fills an important knowledge gap for one of Southeast Asia’s major agricultural economies — one largely closed to empirical research for many years. It is the culmination of a decade of rigorous empirical research on Myanmar’s agrifood system, including through the recent crises. Written by IFPRI researchers and colleagues from Michigan State University, the book’s insights can serve as a to guide immediate humanitarian assistance and inform future growth strategies, once a sustainable resolution to the current crisis is found that ensures lasting peace and good governance.

Myanmar’s agrifood system has proven surprisingly resilient in the face of multiple crises—COVID 19, the military coup, economic mismanagement, global price instability, and widespread conflict—with respect to production and exports. Household welfare has not been resilient, however. High rates of inflation, especially food price inflation, have resulted in dietary degradation across all house hold groups, especially those dependent on casual wage labor. Among household members, young children experience the highest rates of inadequate dietary quality. Expanded social protection to improve access to better-quality diets for vulnerable households and individuals is therefore needed. Beyond the current political crisis, increased public and private investment in a more efficient and dynamic agrifood system should be a high priority. This will help drive down poverty rates and ensure access to healthy diets in the near term, while laying the foundation for sustained growth and structural transformation of the economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of agrifood systems to shocks and stresses and led to increased global food insecurity and malnutrition. Action is needed to make agrifood systems more resilient, efficient, sustainable and inclusive. The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 presents country-level indicators of the resilience of agrifood systems. The indicators measure the robustness of primary production and food availability, as well as physical and economic access to food. They can thus help assess the capacity of national agrifood systems to absorb shocks and stresses, a key aspect of resilience. The report analyses the vulnerabilities of food supply chains and how rural households cope with risks and shocks. It discusses options to minimize trade-offs that building resilience may have with efficiency and inclusivity. The aim is to offer guidance on policies to enhance food supply chain resilience, support livelihoods in the agrifood system and, in the face of disruption, ensure sustainable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to all.

The Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030 is a collaborative effort of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. It brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations as well as input from collaborating member countries to provide an annual assessment of the prospects for the coming decade of national, regional and global agricultural commodity markets. The publication consists of 11 Chapters; Chapter 1 covers agricultural and food markets; Chapter 2 provides regional outlooks and the remaining chapters are dedicated to individual commodities.

We assess the impact of Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a post-pandemic phone survey. Two thirds of our respondents reported that their incomes had fallen after the pandemic began and almost half reported that their ability to satisfy their food needs had worsened. Employing a household fixed effects difference-in-difference approach, we find that the household food insecurity increased by 11.7 percentage points and the size of the food gap by 0.47 months in the aftermath of the onset of the pandemic. Participation in the PSNP offsets virtually all of this adverse change; the likelihood of becoming food insecure increased by only 2.4 percentage points for PSNP households and the duration of the food gap increased by only 0.13 months. The protective role of PSNP is greater for poorer households and those living in remote areas. Results are robust to definitions of PSNP participation, different estimators and how we account for the non-randomness of mobile phone ownership. PSNP households were less likely to reduce expenditures on health and education by 7.7 percentage points and were less likely to reduce expenditures on agricultural inputs by 13 percentage points. By contrast, mothers’ and children’s diets changed little, despite some changes in the composition of diets with consumption of animal source foods declining significantly.

In March 2023, we interviewed more than 430 active rice millers to assess business disruptions and price changes at the midstream of Myanmar’s most important agricultural value chain. Key findings  High fuel costs and electricity supply remain the most commonly reported disruptions in March 2023, with medium/ large modern mills facing more issues related to transport costs, electricity supply, and transport restrictions.  Among the disruptions, electricity access is the most significant disruption for both medium/large-scale mills and small/micro mills, followed by fuel costs and fuel access.  Smaller mills experienced declines in throughput, while larger mills maintained similar monthly throughput and decreased paddy storage compared to the previous year. Larger mills were less willing to provide credit to farmers, and there was an increase in byproduct sales for smaller mills.  Wages paid by mills increased by about 18 percent, working capital requirements to buy paddy rose significantly for both larger and smaller mills, and milling commission fees increased for both mill types compared to last year.  Paddy and rice prices for Emata and Pawsan varieties have significantly increased in March 2023, surpassing prices from March 2021 and 2022 due to currency devaluation and a slight increase in global rice prices. Milling margins have also increased compared to previous years. Despite the price hikes, millers are not extracting a disproportionate share of rice prices, and the prices of main byproducts, like broken rice and rice bran, have remained healthy, presenting positive prospects for mill profit margins.