After decades of isolationism and economic stagnation, Myanmar opened its economy in the beginning of the 2010s, leading to rapid economic growth (Myanmar’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was almost 50 percent larger in 2020 than in 2011). But the COVID-19 health crisis that started in 2020 and a military coup in the beginning of 2021 – and the subsequent increase in conflicts, forced displacements, and migration – dramatically reversed that outlook, with Myanmar’s GDP in 2022 estimated to be 13 percent smaller than three years earlier. The agricultural sector also changed accordingly during this period.

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.

Access to agricultural extension and crop advisory services can play a crucial role in ensuring widespread and appropriate use of new and improved agricultural technologies, but the delivery and use of such services is not well understood in Myanmar. We assess their use based on repeated large-scale and nationally representative farm surveys from 2020 onwards, as well as on insights from key informant interviews and secondary data. The major findings are the following: Agricultural extension use is low and declining. Before the crisis years – due to COVID-19 and a military coup – agricultural extension provision and use in Myanmar was at much lower levels than in neighboring countries. There has been a further decline in use since. Forty-one percent of farmers reported to have received crop advice during the monsoon of 2020, but this share declined by 9 percentage points to 32 percent of farmers in the monsoon of 2022. In-person agricultural extension is more widely used than digital extension. In the last dry season, 26 and 20 percent of the farmers relied on in-person and digital extension respectively. The private sector is the main provider of in-person agricultural extension. During the last dry season, the main provider of in-person agricultural extension was the private sector (used by 18 percent of the farmers), followed by the public sector (13 percent of the farmers), and NGOs (6 percent). Previous seasons show similar shares. In-person agricultural extension has been declining since 2020. In the last three years, there has been a significant decline in the provision of in-person extension services by all providers. In the case of the public sector in particular, the number of agricultural extension events in 2021/22 dropped by more than 50 percent compared to before the crisis years. Digital agricultural extension service provision increased rapidly before 2020. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis, the provision of digital extension services grew rapidly, linked to the rapid expansion of mobile cellphone networks and the spread of cheap smart phones. The total number of posts on Facebook by agricultural companies and organizations from July 2015 until November 2019 more than tripled. The biggest growth in posts was seen in 2018 and 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital agricultural extension provision decreased immediately after the coup, but then expanded again in the years after. It was used by 20 percent of the farmers during the last dry season. Most users started using digital agricultural extension since the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis. After the initial drop in 2021 - as the use of Facebook was banned and as there were severe communication blockages - there has been an increase in activity since, and this has occurred despite the persistent communication and internet problems and reduced mobile network access in the country. Digital agricultural extension is mostly provided through Facebook by agricultural input companies and social enterprises. The most widely used services are provided through Facebook pages, that for a number of organizations and companies have millions of followers. An analysis of the posts on these Facebook pages shows they contain more technical information than product advertisements, even so for (almost) all commercial input retail companies. We also recently note the establishment of farmer extension groups – a more interactive model – and specific commodity focused groups on Facebook. There are also groups on other online platforms, including specialized agricultural apps and call centers. However, these platforms are less used. Digital extension services are almost exclusively provided by the private sector, including social businesses. Use of agricultural extension is non-inclusive, with less educated, more remote, female, and smaller farmers accessing them less, for digital as well as for in-person extension. We also note an important difference by age, with older farmers relying more on in-person services and younger ones more on digital extension. Conflict-affected areas access agricultural extension services significantly less frequently. Farmers residing in townships under martial law – 13 percent of the townships – use any extension (in-person or digital) service less (8 percent compared to townships not under martial law, often because they lack access to the internet in these townships). While farmers residing in the most insecure areas use in-person extension less (11 percent less), they are however able to rely on digital services to a similar extent as farmers in the more secure townships. The findings of the study have a number of important implications. Scaling of digital extension. Given the widespread insecurity and mobility constraints in the country, limiting in-person travel, alternative digital opportunities have recently emerged that can provide crop advisory services at scale, and especially in some – but not all – of the conflict-affected areas. The scaling-up of such services would be very much welcomed, given that currently only one out of five farmers in Myanmar are relying on such services. Leverage the experience of the private sector. The private sector is most active in agricultural extension, in-person and digital. It has been leading the pivot from in-person to the provision of digital services – not only focusing on sales of their products, but very much being involved in crop advice overall – providing important opportunities to work with these initiatives to finetune and extend the reach of agronomic and other advice for farmers, especially as a large share of farmers is not yet reached by current agricultural extension models. Embrace innovations. Innovations in digital agriculture are quickly emerging - such as chatbots and A.I. - but are not yet being used to their fullest extent in Myanmar. Further piloting, testing, and evaluating the impact of such innovations should be encouraged. Ensure internet access. Access to the internet is problematic in Myanmar – more than 40 percent of all households in Myanmar reported in a recent national survey that they never or only occasionally use the internet - and further efforts to ensure access, especially in conflict affected areas, as well as improve digital literacy should be encouraged. Assess impact of agricultural extension. Despite the interest in the country, few rigorous assessments have been done on the impact of different modalities of extension on adoption of improved technologies and agricultural performance. This would be useful evidence to stimulate the scale-up of the most promising models.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominent among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.

A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

The study developed a results framework to analyze Rwanda’s progress towards selected CAADP/Malabo, SDGs and Agenda 2063 goals. A Computable General Equilibrium model linked to an income distribution Micro-Simulation model were used to identify priority investment areas for accelerated agricultural growth, poverty and inequality reduction. The current investment trend simulated in the baseline scenario would leave Rwanda off-track to meet these objectives. The analysis of alternative agricultural investment scenarios shows that enhancing the role of the private sector in agriculture will be critical in curbing supply side constraints. The government plays a central role by creating an environment and making the sector more attractive to private investors. Developments outside of the agricultural sector and social protection will be critical to further reduce poverty. Productivity remains one of the major challenges but also one of the most effective solutions for accelerated agricultural growth in Rwanda. Agricultural investments should be designed considering the agricultural value-chain.