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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is an agency within the United Nations that is dedicated to ending world hunger. The goal of the FAO is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. The FAO focuses on strategic programs such as reducing rural poverty, increasing the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises, and more.

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Projects

Foresight Modeling with IFPRI’s IMPACT Model

Foresight Modeling with IFPRI’s IMPACT Model

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Publications

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Working Paper

How have foreign exchange market distortions and conflict affected agricultural production incentives in Myanmar?

2024Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis
Details

How have foreign exchange market distortions and conflict affected agricultural production incentives in Myanmar?

Fluctuations in agricultural prices pose significant challenges for fragile and conflict-affected economies due to their critical role in ensuring food security. This study examines changes in agricultural prices at the export, wholesale, and farm level in the case of Myanmar, which experienced a surge in conflicts from 2021 onward, following a military coup. The major findings are as follows: • Regarding macroeconomic impacts, the military government implemented a dual exchange rate system, maintaining a fixed exchange rate significantly below the market rate and effectively imposing an across-the-board export tax on all export commodities of approximately 24 percent between August 2022 and August 2024. This policy particularly affects rice, Myanmar’s main staple and a key export crop. • The scarcity of foreign exchange due to this dual exchange rate system increased the costs of imported inputs. It is estimated that prices of inorganic fertilizers – farmers’ most important commercial input – saw an increase of 10 percent compared to the price in Thailand since the start of the dual exchange rate system. • Regarding domestic trade effects, regions with the highest insecurity exhibited similar agricultural output prices but higher input costs, resulting in reduced farm profitability compared to more secure regions. However, the magnitude of these effects is relatively small, with estimated increases in input prices due to insecurity ranging from one to six percent. Insecure areas also show more often a lack of input availability. • Farmers who reside in insecure areas reported between one and six percentage points higher lack of access to agricultural inputs – fertilizer, agrochemicals, mechanization, and seed – in their communities. The relatively small effects of insecurity on input and output markets suggest a degree of resilience in the private sector’s ability to maintain trade under conflict conditions. • The biggest effect on input markets is seen in the case of agricultural labor. Depending on the measure used, farmers in the most insecure areas had a 7 to 15 percentage points higher likelihood of reporting lack of access to agricultural laborers compared to the most secure areas. • The exchange rate policies are found to have been much more harmful for farmers’ incentives than the domestic trade effects, even for the most conflict-affected areas, indicating the importance of considering macroeconomic effects for agricultural incentives in Myanmar. • Despite the significant disincentives brought about by conflict, the agricultural sector has shown surprising resilience over the recent conflict period, seemingly linked to advantageous international price developments for farmers: international rice prices increased by 27 percent while urea prices decreased by 52 percent between August 2022 and May 2024. • While these international evolutions have partly mitigated the impact of the conflict on farmers’ profitability, the impacts of these price developments on consumers in Myanmar have, however, been severe. An analysis of rice retail prices in Myanmar over the last two and half years show that they have more than tripled and that the overall costs of the common diet more than doubled. A failure of nominal income to keep pace with this food price inflation led to an increase in poverty by 10 percent from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023.

Year published

2024

Authors

Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis

Citation

Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis (MAPSA). 2024. How have foreign exchange market distortions and conflict affected agricultural production incentives in Myanmar? Myanmar SSP Working Paper 60. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Agricultural Prices; Economic Systems; Food Security; Markets; Exports; Taxes; Imports; Farmers; Inputs

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Book Chapter

Agrifood trade

2024Diao, Xinshen; Masias, Ian; Lwin, Wuit Yi
Details

Agrifood trade

Agrifood exports make up about one-third of Myanmar’s total exports, and their share of both total exports and as a ratio of total GDP has risen in recent years. Agrifood exports have the potential to generate higher income for farmers, traders, processors, and other stakeholders within agrifood value chains. Additionally, they can contribute to the country’s foreign exchange earnings, supporting the importation of manufactured products embedded with modern technology required for the transformation of the agrifood sector. This chapter analyzes the past performance of key agrifood exports and assesses their potential role in the transformation of Myanmar’s agrifood system and the overall economy.

Year published

2024

Authors

Diao, Xinshen; Masias, Ian; Lwin, Wuit Yi

Citation

Diao, Xinshen; Masias, Ian; and Lwin, Wuit Yi. 2024. Agrifood trade. In Myanmar’s agrifood system: Historical development, recent shocks, future opportunities. Boughton, Duncan; Belton, Ben; Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Masias, Ian; and Minten, Bart (Eds.). Chapter 14, Pp. 373-408. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155153

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Agrifood Sector; Exports; Value Chains; Income; Markets; Policies; Economic Development

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Book Chapter

Agricultural land: Inequality and insecurity

2024Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Belton, Ben; Fang, Peixun; Minten, Bart; Naing, Phyo Thandar
Details

Agricultural land: Inequality and insecurity

Land is indispensable to agricultural production and, thus, a critical resource in sustaining agriculture-based livelihoods. Moreover, land as property may facilitate access to credit when used as collateral, further facilitating productive activities. Land ownership also constitutes a buffer against shocks, as it can often be rented out, mortgaged, or sold when cash needs are high.

Year published

2024

Authors

Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Belton, Ben; Fang, Peixun; Minten, Bart; Naing, Phyo Thandar

Citation

Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Belton, Ben; Fang, Peixun; Minten, Bart; and Naing, Phyo Thandar. 2024. Agricultural land: Inequality and insecurity. In Myanmar’s agrifood system: Historical development, recent shocks, future opportunities. Boughton, Duncan; Belton, Ben; Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Masias, Ian; and Minten, Bart (Eds.). Chapter 6, pp. 149-170. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155256

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Farmland; Equality; Tenure Insecurity; Livelihoods

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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The future of food and agriculture – Drivers and triggers for transformation

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