Resource-poor rice farmers in Myanmar suffer double impact from political conflict

History shows that as agricultural technologies have gradually improved, food production has grown. Yet adverse economic, political, or disaster-related shocks can disrupt this pattern. Since 2021, the political crisis in Myanmar has led to a deterioration in positive technological change, with particularly worrisome effects on smallholder farmers, a new study published in the journal Agricultural Economics shows.

In Myanmar, increases in violent events have caused significant downward shifts in rice production (Figure 1) and changes in reliance on agricultural machinery and other forms of capital-impacts that have hurt resource-poor, impoverished farmers of the country's most important staple.