In the Face Of Adverse Food Security, One Woman Learns To Adopt A New Farming Practice.

Women farmers are often more knowledgeable about traditional farming practices and have a deep understanding of the local environment.

Women farmers in Myanmar, have an important role and contributions in country’s economic growth, good production, value chain and food system sustainability. They play a diverse role in agriculture and make enormous contributions not only cultivating crops, but also helping their families, rearing animals for food or trade and working in forestry and fisheries sectors. They are involved in a range of farming activities, including planting, harvesting, processing, and marketing of crops which are important sources of nutrition for people in the country.

Despite this, they are facing significant challenges such as limited access to land, credit, and technology and training, they have been able to achieve certain success in the agriculture sector through their hard work and innovation. The protracted crisis in Myanmar has severely negatively impacted agriculture sector in Myanmar. While food insecurity is already a problem, significant reduction of food production is anticipated due to restrictions on local travels and on private transport services hampering preparations of farm operations, procurement of seeds and other agricultural inputs, rising prices of the inputs and loss of access to export market.

The January 2023 data in Emergencies Monitoring brief produced by FAO and WFP found that households in conflict-affected areas, rural households, female-headed households, households with debt, and those vulnerable to economic shocks had the worst food security outcomes.

44 years old Daw Aye Aye Mon has three family members and lives in Letpadan Township, Bago region, and leads them in farming. The family has a few small businesses such as a grinding powder mill and a small biomass power plant, but agriculture is their main sources of income. She normally grows rice in the monsoon season and black gram in the winter season but due to the ongoing crisis, farmers like Daw Aye Aye Mon have had to think innovatively to try and increase food production.

Since September 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) together with its partner have been implementing a pilot project in three townships of Ayeyarwady, Yangon and Bago Regions to promote double monsoon rice (DMR) cropping system in low land areas to boost rice production for social and economic wellbeing as well as considering it as a coping mechanism for any possible disaster in the future. The project helps rice producers to establish DMR, introduce suitable varieties, provide farm inputs and agricultural techniques, linkage with possible inputs and outputs markets, technical service providers and financial institutions.