Rice farmers in the agricultural heartland of war-ravaged Rakhine State in western Myanmar are struggling to make ends meet because they lack a market for their produce.
The regime has blocked roads and waterways since the latest fighting broke out in November last year in a bid to cut off the state from the rest of the country.
The blockade and imposition of checkpoints have made it impossible for local farmers to sell their rice to Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Magwe in central Myanmar, while the state’s border trade with India and Bangladesh has also been halted due to hostilities.
There are 800,000 acres of farmland in Rakhine, chiefly in Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, Minbya, Ponnagyun, and Myebon townships. But much of it was left fallow this monsoon season that started in June and ended in November as armed conflict between the Myanmar military and the rebel Arakan Army (AA) as well as the high cost of fuel and fertilizer curtailed rice cultivation.
Farmer Ko Thein Hlaing from Chaungtu village in Kyauktaw Township told The Irrawaddy: “We faced a lot of difficulties growing rice during the fighting. We had to pay high costs for harvester services due to high fuel prices, and now there is no buyer. Things are getting worse.”
Due to the fuel costs, the majority of farmers in Rakhine cannot afford to hire combine harvesters but have to harvest the rice by themselves.
One farmer from Taung-U village in Mrauk-U said: “It’s harvest time now, but farmers are reluctant to go to their farms. There is no demand, and rice prices are bad. Some farmers pay workers reaping their paddy fields with half the harvest instead of money.”
Often demand for rice is limited to family consumption.
Many farmers said rice from last year’s harvest remains in their silos as the junta’s blockade introduced in November last year effectively barred them from selling it.
“I still have rice from last year’s harvest because there was no buyer,” a farmer from Kyauktaw said. “There is also no buyer this year, and we will have to incur storage costs for rice at a time when people are short of money. Recently, rice merchants’ associations said they would buy rice, so I transported my rice to the riverside, but they have neither come nor paid. Crows and rats are feasting on my rice.”
The banking system has collapsed, and communications are down in many parts of Rakhine amid the fighting, halting mobile money services and resulting in cash shortages.
The level and intensity of armed conflict remains high, severely affecting lives and livelihoods, disrupting production and supply chains, and heightening uncertainty around the economic outlook, the World Bank said in its latest report earlier this month.
