PUBLICATIONS

Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS), Round 5

The Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS) is a nationwide phone panel consisting of approximately 4,663 households. The objective of the survey is to collect data on farm characteristics and agricultural assets, area and crops planted, access to inputs, crop marketing, and constraints in agricultural activities. The respondents interviewed are a sub-sample of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey. A novel sampling strategy in combination with the development of household and population weights allows for estimates that are nationally, regionally, and urban/rural representative. MAPS Round 5 survey was implemented by phone by Myanmar Survey Research (MSR) from January to March, 2024. The MAPS collected information on household characteristics, overall area cultivated, crops grown, security problems, input use and farm management practices, yields, sales, output prices, and marketing behavior. MAPS Round 5 focused on the agricultural activities of crop farmers during the monsoon of 2023.

Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets – September 2024 survey round

We assess changes in food prices and diet costs based on large-scale surveys of food vendors (fielded from June 2020 until September 2024) and households (fielded in six periods between 2022 to 2024) across rural and urban areas and in all states/regions of Myanmar.
Key Findings
 Between July 2023 and September 2024, the cost of a healthy and commonly consumed diet increased by 34 and 35 percent, respectively.
 The price of rice – the major staple – was more than twice as high in September 2024 compared to two years prior. Prices rose by 29 percent between July 2023 and September 2024, and by only 7 percent between March and September 2024.
 In September 2024, cooking oil prices were 88 percent higher than the previous year, but 15 percent lower than two years prior.
 In September 2024, the median prices of most protein-rich foods, except for fish, were at least 50 percent higher compared to two years prior. Over the same two-year period, banana prices doubled.
 The highest costs for both common and healthy diets are seen in the conflict-affected states of Rakhine and Kachin, where in September 2024, the costs of the healthy diet was about 65 percent higher than the national average and the costs of the common diet costs was about 40 percent higher.
 Compared to average casual wages, the healthy and common diets are least affordable in Kachin, Rakhine and Magway and most affordable in Kayin and Mon.
 Between the fourth quarter of 2023 and September 2024, the prices of petrol rose by 90 percent, bar soap and paracetamol by nearly 50 percent, and toothpaste by 160 percent.
Recommended Actions
 Ensuring food is available at affordable prices is crucial to prevent food security and nutrition issues in the country. Therefore, prioritizing a well-functioning agri-food system should be a key focus for all stakeholders.
 The food price situation in Rakhine State is most concerning among all states and regions, and the state should be prioritized – to the extent that this possible – for assistance.

Rice productivity in Myanmar: Assessment of the 2024 dry season

Key Findings
We analyze paddy rice productivity and profitability data for the dry seasons of 2023 and 2024, based on the Myanmar Agriculture Performance Survey (MAPS) fielded in the period of July 29th to September 16th, 2024. The survey covered plots of 825 rice paddy producers. It is found that:
• Prices of inputs used in paddy production – labor and mechanization – increased significantly between these two growing seasons by between 36-38 and 59 percent respectively, on average. On the other hand, urea prices declined by 1 percent. Paddy prices at the farm increased by 14 percent.
• Nominal profits for paddy rice farmers increased over the last two seasons. At the same time, price inflation has been high in the country. Therefore, real profits from paddy rice farming, which are nominal prices corrected by the change in the cost of an average food basket, decreased by 15 percent during the dry season of 2024 compared to the dry season of 2023. However, real profits were still higher than two and three years ago.
• Rice productivity at the national level during the dry season of 2024 on farmers’ largest rice plot was slightly higher (+6.9 percent) than in the previous dry season.
• Six percent of the rice farmers reported to have been affected by flooding during the dry season, even before cyclone Yagi affected many farmers in the beginning of September 2024.
Recommended Actions
• As paddy prices have gone up compared to last year, rice prices have gone up substantially as well, making the costs of Myanmar’s staple food unaffordable for some consumers, especially for the most vulnerable ones. Expansion of safety nets, targeted or self-targeted to the poorest, would therefore be beneficial.
• The cyclone Yagi has affected a significant share of monsoon producers. Assistance for farmers in these areas to recover from floods in time for the post-/pre-monsoon is called for.

Resilient Cities urban nutrition profile: Philippines

Child stunting is a persistent problem in the Philippines. While stunting prevalence is higher in rural than in urban areas, it still affects one in four children under the age of five in urban areas and coexists with rising overweight in school-age children, adolescents, and adults. Some urban nutrition interventions have focused on reducing diet-related noncommunicable disease (NCD) risks, but they have not addressed the challenges of the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) (e.g., the coexistence of problems of undernutrition and overnutrition) in school-age children and adolescents. Likewise, the lack of evidence on interventions in the urban food environment (FE) signals a need for studies to better understand the role of FEs in driving unhealthy dietary changes and the DBM and to test approaches to shift consumption patterns toward healthier diets and lifestyles. NCDs are the leading cause of mortality in the Philippines, and NCD risks are higher in urban areas than rural ones. National policies support nutrition with multisectoral approaches, particularly through urban farming and gardening to promote healthy and affordable urban diets. Yet the urban-specific programs must be evaluated. Evaluations of urban agricultural initiatives are needed to document any impact on diets and nutrition and to assess the potential for scale up, especially given land scarcity in dense urban areas. Additionally, multisectoral double-duty actions must be developed to address all forms of malnutrition.

Myanmar Monthly Food Price Report – October 2024

The rapidly evolving food security situation in Myanmar requires a high frequency, systematic and comprehensive approach to monitoring. The Myanmar monthly food price report synthesizes food price trends using publicly available datasets, focusing on key agricultural crops and highlighting regional differences in rice prices. By analyzing these trends, the report aims to provide insights into the broader agricultural market and the factors driving food price fluctuations in Myanmar.

Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: Agricultural crop traders – June 2024 survey

To document changes in the mid-stream of Myanmar’s food value chains, a phone survey of commodity traders was conducted in June 2024 with a sample of 187 active traders in 12 states and regions.

Key Findings:
-Cellphone network challenges rival transportation challenges in both their prevalence and impact, affecting more than half the traders and doubling since 2023.
-More than 30 percent of traders reported being affected by exchange rate volatility and inflation, export/import challenges, and local and regional conflict. Notably, most encountered these shocks in April, May, and June 2024.
-Reported credit challenges are at their highest points in the past three years. The proportion of traders offering credit to farmers has decreased, and for some, the credit terms have shifted to higher interest rates and extended loan durations.
-Prices for the six most common commodities in our data have increased markedly in the past two years. Trader sales prices of rice were three times higher in June 2024 than in April 2022.
-Margins in June 2024 were 0.8 points higher than in April 2023. Rising trading margins could reflect increasing transport or transactions costs in trading, and are generally a negative sign for agrifood system efficiency.

Looking Ahead:
-Communication challenges in cellphone networks together with widespread transport disruptions could lead to inefficiencies in spatial arbitrage and widening gaps between consumer and producer prices.
-Credit challenges are increasing and rising prices will place greater financial stress on the farmers and traders alike.
-More than 40 percent of traders consider the general inflation and exchange rate volatility as a negative shock that reduces their business revenues. This survey was conducted before a large currency devaluation in informal markets and widespread flooding in Myanmar impacting agricultural production and livelihoods. These shocks add additional stress to the food system.

Nature+ Quantitative Baseline Household and Worker Survey, Viet Nam

In 2023, the Nature Positive Solutions (Nature+) baseline survey was conducted in Vietnam, focusing on the districts of Sa Pa and Mai Son. The study aimed to describe the socio-economic conditions and agricultural systems in these areas, providing a baseline assessment to inform ongoing Nature+ interventions. The survey covered 1,153 smallholder farmer households (858 treated and 295 control) across 23 villages.
Data collection employed a two-stage sampling technique and assessed various variables, including socio-economic characteristics, agricultural practices, land use, nutrition, and adoption of Nature+ practices. This data will support the evaluation of Nature+'s impacts on inclusion, poverty reduction, food security, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability.
Additionally, the survey included interviews with 334 workers, covering socio-demographic characteristics, contract types, forced labor, harassment, workplace health and safety, wages, and overtime.
Furthermore, community-level data were collected through interviews conducted by the team’s supervisors in all 23 surveyed villages. Each discussion involved at least three community leaders as key informants.

Endogenous technologies and productivity in rice production: Roles of social instability in Myanmar since 2021

Despite technologies' critical roles in agricultural productivity, evidence is scarce on how conflict affects technology adoption and consequent agricultural productivity, often due to a lack of data in fragile states. Our study contributes to filling this knowledge gap by using unique large-scale data on rice producers before and after a military coup in Myanmar in 2021 that led to a significant increase in conflicts in the country. We find that the increase in violent events including those in adjacent townships significantly changed the rice production function in both factor-neutral and non-neutral ways. Specifically, increased violent events have been generally associated with downward factor-neutral shift in production function, and more importantly, increased output elasticity to agricultural capital (equipment) owned (in other words, reduced output resilience against capital ownership shocks). Our evidence also suggests that this has been led partly through reduced access to agricultural extension services, which would otherwise help farmers maintain productivity even with limited capital ownership by substituting it with human capital and skills. Our results consistently hold for both panel and cross-sectional production functions across various specifications and particularly in Lower Myanmar. Results also indicate that lower mechanization service fees partly mitigate these effects.

A framework for cost-effectiveness analysis of greenhouse gas mitigation measures in dairy industry with an application to dairy farms in China

Community and household shocks: Findings from the seventh round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (January–June 2024)

The seventh round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented between April and June 2024. It follows six rounds that were carried out since the beginning of December 2021. This report discusses the findings from the seventh round related to shocks including conflict, climatic, service sector, and economic. The security situation in Myanmar continued to worsen during the seventh-round recall period, which spanned from January to June 2024. Households felt insecure in their communities, as reported by 23 percent of households, and had low levels of trust in their communities, as reported also by 23 percent of households. This is because crime and violence remained high, affecting 16 and 9 percent of communities, respectively. Lawlessness continues to be a widespread issue in Myanmar. In January–June 2024, 18 percent of households reported a lot or some gambling in their community and 13 percent reported drug use. These issues were more prominent in urban areas, compared to rural areas. A new challenge is risk of conscription, reported by 39 percent of households. Another crucial challenge is that 13 percent of respondents felt that it was dangerous for them to move around and do everyday tasks. Finally, three percent of respondents revealed that there was a risk of kidnapping in their community.

Myanmar Monthly Food Price Report – September 2024

The rapidly evolving food security situation in Myanmar requires a high frequency, systematic and comprehensive approach to monitoring. The Myanmar monthly food price report synthesizes food price trends using three publicly available datasets, focusing on key agricultural crops and highlighting regional differences in rice prices. By analyzing these trends, the report aims to provide insights into the broader agricultural market and the factors driving food price fluctuations in Myanmar.

2022 Social Accounting Matrix for Cambodia

The 2022 Cambodia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) follows IFPRI's Standard Nexus SAM approach, by focusing on consistency, comparability, and transparency of data. The Nexus SAMs available on IFPRI's website separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital, with labor further disaggregated across three education-based categories. The household account is divided into 10 representative household groups: Rural and urban households across per capita consumption quintiles. Nexus SAMs support the improvement of model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries and allow for more robust cross-country comparisons of national economic structures, especially agriculture-food systems.

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.

Nourishing Futures: The Philippines promote native foods in school meals

Imagine a bustling schoolyard in the Philippines, where children eagerly tend to their vibrant classroom garden. As part of a school gardening programme, the students are excited to harvest the fruits and vegetables they have carefully cultivated. In just a few hours, these nutritious foods will be served on their lunch plates. This heartwarming scene reflects broader efforts across the Philippines to integrate traditional and indigenous fruit and vegetables into school meals and promote healthy eating habits. Driven by a commitment to improve the quality of school meals, the Philippines, as a School Meals Coalition member, has introduced various initiatives aimed at supporting the health and well-being of students. Beyond combatting hunger, these efforts are designed to enhance learning outcomes and foster a brighter, healthier future for the nation.

Aligned with these goals, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, also a partner of the Coalition, is promoting fruit and vegetable consumption in the Philippines through a CGIAR Research Initiative on Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets (FRESH). In collaboration with the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) and other local partners, FRESH contributed to a desk review of the country’s school food environment literature, policies, and guidelines.

Regional variations in rural livelihoods: Challenges and opportunities

Rural livelihoods in Myanmar are embedded in regional contexts that vary widely in terms of physical geography, climate and agroecology, local resource base, agrarian structure, infrastructure provision, proximity to urban areas and neighboring countries, social networks, institutions, and ethnicities. The composition of livelihoods in each administrative and geographic zone of the country reflects these diverse contexts. Marked variations in livelihood patterns are evident at multiple scales, from the zone or region down to township and village level, so that the composition of livelihoods in villages close to one another sometimes varies widely.

Despite the high level of place-based specificity in the composition of livelihoods, many broad similarities and common trends shape livelihoods at subnational and national levels. These include generally low levels of agricultural productivity relative to other countries in the region in terms of both land and labor; high rates of landlessness, legacies of land confiscation, and unresolved struggles over land rights and access; and generally poor public infrastructure and services—including electricity, roads, schools, health services, and rural credit—though these were improving rapidly in many places before 2020; relatively low levels of diversification and capital in the rural nonfarm economy; high rates of international and domestic outmigration; and histories of ethnopolitical conflict and insecurity.

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.

Myanmar’s agrifood system: Historical development, recent shocks, future opportunities

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.

Farm commercialization: A transformation on hold or in reverse?

When food systems transform, farmers’ interactions with markets change dramatically. With changes from traditional to transitional to modern systems—as defined by Reardon and Minten (2021)— farmers move from mostly subsistence-oriented agriculture with few market interactions toward heavy reliance on spot markets for inputs, outputs, and services, and ultimately to contract farming. Such reliance on markets during these transformation processes has been shown to lead to significant improvements in farm performance and in agricultural households’ welfare.

However, in a number of low- and middle-income countries, there is often a lack of clarity regarding which stage of transformation farms have reached and how to expedite such transformations. There is limited understanding of agricultural markets and farm commercialization in Myanmar in particular because of a lack of nationally representative and updated data on the farm sector. Moreover, over the past decade, the country has undergone substantial changes in its economic and agricultural market policies, as well as major COVID-19 and military coup shocks. This has all had significant impacts on the farm commercialization situation. To understand farm commercialization and its evolution, then, we first need an overview of these policy changes and shocks.

The rice sector

Recent major local shocks have negatively affected Myanmar’s economy
and its people. Disruptions in the world economy linked to the outbreak
of COVID-19 in early 2020 and the Ukraine war in 2022 and 2023
have led to sharp price increases for petroleum products, wheat, vegetable oils,
and other food products, as well as agricultural inputs, such as chemical fertilizers.
Myanmar’s rice sector has also been adversely affected by increases in
insecurity in rural areas, higher world prices, and reduced cross-border exports
to China.

This chapter explores the implications of these shocks for Myanmar’s rice
exports, domestic rice production, and domestic rice prices. First, we discuss
Myanmar’s rice economy. Next, we describe the equations, database, and
parameters of the partial equilibrium model of Myanmar’s rice economy used
in this analysis. We then present model simulation results, covering the effects
of the income and price shocks in 2022, negative rice production shocks
accompanied by lower rice exports in 2023, and implications of a cessation of
cross-border rice exports to China. The final section summarizes the results,
discusses policy implications, and suggests areas for further work.

Livestock, capture fisheries, and aquaculture: Status and recent trends

Livestock rearing and fishing have been central components of rural livelihoods in Myanmar for centuries and remain so today. More capital-intensive forms of marine fishing, aquaculture, and poultry farming began to expand during the early 1990s and have grown briskly since then. Poultry and aquaculture commoditization accelerated between 2011 and 2019, stimulated by the demand-side pull of rapid income growth and by foreign and domestic investment in areas such as feed milling and food retail (for example, businesses such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, which opened in Myanmar in 2015). However, despite recent growth, both sectors lag behind those in more developed countries in the region in technological sophistication, scale, and regulation.

This chapter summarizes the status of the supply side of livestock, capture fisheries, and aquaculture based on an analysis of nationally representative data extracted from the Myanmar Living Conditions Survey (MLCS) 2017 (CSO 2019) and a review of trends in these sectors using information drawn from other recent surveys and secondary sources. We analyze MLCS to sketch a picture of the contributions of livestock, capture fisheries, and aquaculture to household incomes in the four agroecological zones (AEZs—Delta, Dry Zone, Coastal Zone, and Hills and Mountains) into which MLCS results are categorized (CSO, UNDP, and World Bank 2019). The MLCS livestock and fishery modules asked questions about each household’s ownership, production, sales, and consumption of livestock and livestock byproducts, as well as aquaculture and capture fisheries products in the previous 12 months. Respondents were asked to estimate the quantity or value of these variables, making it possible to calculate the value of livestock and fish income, expenditure, and consumption for each household.

A historical and regional perspective on Myanmar’s agrifood system

Agriculture and the related input supply, processing, trade, and retail distribution activities that make up national food systems are a major driver of rural economic transformation in low- and middle-income countries (Mellor 2017). As Chapter 2 shows, in addition to directly contributing to rural employment and GDP in Myanmar, the growth of the agrifood system has high multiplier effects on the broader rural economy. Yet in Myanmar, as Warr (2016) argues, lack of agricultural productivity growth combined with dependence on extractive sectors, such as jade, teak, and natural gas, has held back the transformation of the economy.

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.

Food processing: A stalled transformation

Processed foods account for 80 percent of global food sales. Such foods are becoming increasingly important in low- and middle-income countries, driven by growing demand for convenient and ready-to-eat products. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the state and evolution of food processing in Myanmar and to assess the effect of the crises (COVID-19 and the military coup) on the different segments—production, trade, and consumption—of the sector. This assessment is important given the possible implications of changes in food processing for agriculture, employment opportunities in the food processing industry and food service sector, and nutritional outcomes.

Introduction [in Myanmar’s agrifood system: Historical development, recent shocks, future opportunities]

A decade of rapid, albeit uneven, progress in Myanmar’s economic development was thrown into reverse by a series of shocks that began with the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The pandemic was followed by the military coup of February 2021 and the global food, fuel, and fertilizer supply crisis spurred by the armed conflict in Ukraine that began a year later. The coup led to a surge in conflict around the country, hampering and often devastating the livelihoods of the population at large while also causing the internal displacement of about 2.3 million people by the end of 2023, adding to those displaced during prior conflicts. The sharp depreciation of Myanmar’s currency since the coup multiplied the inflationary impact of international price increases for fuel, fertilizer, and imported vegetable oils, causing inflation to spiral upward even as employment opportunities withered. By late 2023, over 70 percent of the population was estimated to be in poverty, more than double the 2017 poverty rate of 25 percent.

Though Myanmar’s agrifood system was not left unscathed by these shocks, it has proved resilient. Agriculture and the rural economy are essential to Myanmar’s development, as 70 percent of the population and 87 percent of the country’s poor live in rural areas (MOPF and World Bank 2017a). Agriculture and its associated agro-industries form a key sector of the national economy, employing half of the total labor force and contributing one-third of national GDP—about 23 percent directly in farm incomes and another 11 percent in agro-processing, distribution, marketing, exports, and food retailing (Chapter 2). Ekanayake, Ambrosio, and Jaffee (2019) estimate that nearly half of Myanmar’s poverty reduction between 2005 and 2015 was attributable directly to progress in agriculture. Therefore, a well-functioning agrifood system is crucial to the welfare and food security of Myanmar’s residents.

The agrifood system: structure and contribution to development goals

As countries develop, agrifood systems (AFS) are expected to evolve beyond primary agriculture. The earliest stages of development are typically characterized by subsistence farming; as agricultural productivity rises, farmers begin to supply surplus production to markets, which creates employment opportunities for workers in the off-farm economy. Rising rural incomes generate demand for more diverse products; this leads to more nonfarm activities such as processing, packaging, transporting, and trading. In the early stages of transformation, the agriculture sector serves as an engine of rural—and even national—economic growth. Eventually, urbanization, the nonfarm economy, and nonagricultural incomes play more dominant roles in propelling AFS development, with urban and rural nonfarm consumers creating most of the market demand for agricultural outputs via value chains that connect rural areas to towns and cities. The exact nature of this transformation process varies across countries because of the diverse structure of their economies and the unique growth trajectories of their various agrifood and nonfood subsectors. A focus solely on primary agriculture without an understanding of its linkages to off-farm components of the economy masks the importance of AFS to the overall economy and its potential contribution as a driver of development going forward. In this chapter, we first measure the size, structure, and historical contribution of the AFS to economic growth and transformation in Myanmar. Second, we assess the potential for AFS growth led by productivity gains in different agricultural value chains to contribute to development outcomes in Myanmar using the Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) model (IFPRI 2023b). We measure AFS using national accounts and employment statistics to either track or simulate growth and employment changes over time. We disaggregate AFS into several value chain groups, which allows the analysis to offer a unique and useful perspective on the drivers of AFS growth and transformation. Finally, we discuss the implications of the recent crises for the future of the AFS and propose both short- and long-term policy recommendations to help steer recovery.

Women and youth in agriculture

Gendered social and cultural norms often strongly emphasize women’s roles as caregivers. Such norms may, in turn, contribute to gender patterns in economic activity, including agricultural activity. Meanwhile, youth are at a critical stage in their lives as they transition from being “dependent” household members to a more independent stage of life, with increasing caregiving and income-generating responsibilities. There may, therefore, be generational differences between youth and non-youth in terms of their contributions to economic activities—including the extent to which they are involved in one sector or another.

Knowing and understanding the gendered and generational contributions and roles of women, men, and youth in rural livelihoods and the inequalities therein are critical to designing policies and interventions. Without such evidence, policies and projects risk being designed on the basis of false assumptions, at best lowering efficiency and, at worst, leading to harmful outcomes. So far, only a handful of studies have described gender roles in Myanmar agriculture, and these rely on case study evidence and qualitative data. Little quantitative evidence is available about women’s and youth’s roles in agriculture in Myanmar and, more broadly, in the rural economy.

Income diversification and the rural nonfarm economy

The rapid transformation of the rural sector between 2011 and 2021 has been well-documented in relation to farming and included profound changes in crops grown, farming practices, markets, and value chains. This transformation has been described in this volume, as well as in Belton and Filipski (2019), Filipski et al. (2020), Boughton et al. (2018), and World Bank (2017). However, this period also witnessed a diversification of activities away from agriculture, with incomes shifting away from reliance on subsistence farming and agriculture in general. The contributions of wage work and rural nonfarm businesses are growing in importance as the rural sector moves beyond an agrarian model in which primary agricultural production is the dominant source of wealth. Though the general equilibrium analysis from Chapter 2 shows that agriculture remains a major driver of economic activity, a micro-level analysis finds that activities either downstream in the food value chain or outside of the food system entirely are now responsible for large shares of rural incomes.

Agricultural mechanization: Drivers and characteristics

Widespread agricultural mechanization is a very recent phenomenon in Myanmar. In 2010, just 0.5 percent of farm households in the Delta used combine harvesters, and only 6 percent used threshers. A study of farm production economics in the country’s main agricultural zones in 2013/14 found that only 1 percent of paddy-cultivating households used combine harvesters. This was attributed to a combination of low wages and surplus labor in rural areas, poor infrastructure, a poor regulatory environment, and a lack of access to long-term capital among farmers.

However, Myanmar’s policy reforms and reintegration into regional and global markets between 2011 and 2020 contributed to increasingly dynamic conditions, including economic growth averaging 7 percent per year (ADB 2018), accelerating out-migration from rural areas, and rapid rural transformation. This context gave rise to rapid and widespread agricultural mechanization.

This chapter compares data from two pairs of complementary surveys to assess the effects of these economic changes on the uptake of agricultural mechanization. We combine demand-side (farm household) and supply-side
(agricultural machinery retailer) surveys implemented between 2016 and 2018 across two major agroecological zones—a deltaic rice-growing environment (the Delta) and a rainfed semiarid zone (the Dry Zone). This approach allows
for triangulation of results and captures variations in mechanization across geographies. In addition, we use data from multiple rounds of rapid assessments to evaluate the impacts of COVID-19 and other recent shocks.

Agricultural value chains: Examples of quiet transformation

Myanmar’s agricultural value chains1 are often perceived to be traditional and inefficient and to suffer from underinvestment, credit constraints, and inadequate technology. This perception is partly rooted in the legacy of Myanmar’s military socialist government (1962–1988). During this period, most private business was nationalized, agricultural production in the lowlands was brought under a command-and-control system, and the state assumed all responsibility for the provision of agricultural inputs, services such as mechanization, and crop procurement and marketing.

Vulnerability and welfare during multiple crises

The triple transition that took place between 2011 and 2019 in Myanmar—from a planned to an open market economy, from military to civilian rule, from conflict to peace—was not without its limitations. As discussed in Chapter 1, poverty reduction was modest relative to economic growth, a fully democratic system was not established, and ethnic conflict continued in many areas. In this mixed context of social welfare improvements and unfulfilled reforms, COVID-19 hit—the first in a series of crises. The pandemic had an immediate adverse impact on Myanmar’s economy and pushed many households into poverty. Then, while the country remained under threat from the pandemic, in February 2021, the military took over in a coup, and Myanmar fell into a political crisis. Declines in welfare accelerated for many. One year later, the Myanmar economy faced sharp rises in prices for food, fuel, and fertilizer as a result of a global economic crisis triggered by the start of the conflict in Ukraine. This triple crisis—pandemic, political, economic— has had enormous impacts on welfare and livelihoods in Myanmar. (Chapter 1 summarizes how the triple crisis unfolded; refer to that chapter for details on the causes, levels, and apparent consequences of the sequence of
shocks.)

Conclusion: From recovery to renewal of the agrifood system

Myanmar’s agrifood system is of critical importance for the near-term survival and longer-term flourishing of its diverse population. Prior to the recent crises, the food system accounted for almost half (47 percent) of Myanmar’s GDP and almost two-thirds (64 percent) of employment, while primary agriculture accounted for 22 percent of GDP and 49 percent of employment (Chapter 2). Recovery from the multiple crises Myanmar has faced since 2020 will require a combination of effective humanitarian assistance and sustained policy reforms and investment to resolve infrastructure limitations and constraints to sustainable productivity growth. These efforts are necessary to enable the agrifood system to fulfill its potential to improve food and nutrition security and reduce poverty.

Our concluding chapter first reviews the trajectory of the agrifood system through multiple economic shocks, from the onset of COVID-19 in early 2020 through to the end of 2023; and the types of assistance needed to mitigate widespread food and nutrition insecurity. It then turns to longer-term investments and policies required to enable the agrifood system to drive long-term recovery and sustainable economic growth. While many of the shocks experienced by Myanmar since the onset of COVID-19 have also been experienced by other low-income countries, the consequences have been magnified and prolonged due to the military coup of February 1, 2021.

Migration trends and implications

Following economic and political reforms initiated in 2011, the country’s population has been adapting rapidly to new opportunities and challenges, including through relocation and migration. This chapter describes some of the patterns and dynamics related to these population flows, as well as their consequences for Myanmar’s rural economy. Most of the chapter is based on data collected prior to the triple crises, but recent analyses allow us to give an overview of the migration landscape in the post-2020 era at the end of the chapter (MAPSA 2024c). These analyses confirm that overall migration dynamics have largely persisted.

Dietary quality and nutrition: Past progress, current and future challenges

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the military coup in 2021, Myanmar was experiencing a period of rapid economic growth and transformation in the wake of economic and political liberalization. Between 2005 and 2017, average annual growth in real GDP per capita was 7.8 percent, making Myanmar the fastest growing economy among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Strong growth was accompanied by a halving of the national poverty rate between 2005 and 2017 from 48.2 to 24.8 percent (CSO, UNDP, and World Bank 2019). COVID19 and the economic and political shocks affecting the country since 2021 have led to an economic contraction: 2021 saw an 18 percent drop in real GDP per capita; in 2022, real GDP per capita was estimated to be 15 percent lower than in 2019 (World Bank 2022). The impacts on poverty were even more dire. A high-frequency panel phone survey of mothers and young children in urban Yangon and the rural Dry Zone revealed incomes collapsing during the COVID-19 lockdowns and further income losses in the wake of the February 2021 military takeover (Headey et al. 2022). Prices rose dramatically, with the consumer price index rising by 20 percent between July 2021 and July 2022 (MOPF 2022), while food prices rose by 34 percent over the same period and by about 50 percent between December 2021 and December 2022. Nationally, a variety of different poverty indicators suggest that between 40 and 50 percent of the population was living in poverty in 2022 —poverty rates similar to those found between 2005 and 2010.

Maize residue management in Myanmar

This note provides an overview of maize residue management practices in Myanmar based on interviews conducted in June 2024 with a sample of 599 maize farmers in the primary maize growing region.
Key Findings
 Burning maize residues is not the most common practice in Myanmar, and the share of farmers burning fell from 44 percent in 2013 to 34 percent in 2023 as farmers have adopted alternate approaches, such as retaining residues in the soil.
 The broader maize sector evolution over the last decade has brought several changes, some of which likely increase the relative benefits of burning – e.g., decline in labor availability, decline in livestock ownership.
 Access to markets for maize residues has improved, though still less than one fifth of farmers can sell their maize residues.
 Soil fertility is important to farmers. Soil fertility improvement was the most common reported benefit to both burning and retaining residues. However, most farmers that do not burn disagree that soils are improved by burning, while most farmers that burn agree.
 Most farmers are aware of the human health effects of burning, but more than a quarter strongly disagree that burning residues negatively affects the health of others.
 The majority of farmers that burn agree that their community expects them to.
Recommendations
 Farmer education and extension are leading candidates to reduce maize residue burning in Myanmar. Key topics where there are evident knowledge gaps include highlighting the large relative gains in long-term soil health from retaining the residues compared to burning, and the high external health costs of burning.
 Interventions to reduce burning are critical to reducing environmental and health externalities, and in light of the planned Thai bans in the importation of maize from countries using burning as a residue management practice. However, the Thai government should adapt their strategy and consider other methods to reduce residue burning in neighboring countries including supporting education, or providing price incentives or reduced tariffs for not burning as opposed to outright bans which would likely have limited effects on burning decisions at the farm level.
 More research is needed to better understand the driving factors behind maize residue management decisions.

Monitoring the cost and affordability of a healthy diet within Countries: Building systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Viet Nam

Background
Governments around the world collect food price data on a frequent basis, often monthly, for the purpose of monitoring inflation. These routine economic data can be used with a nutrition-sensitive lens for understanding economic access to a healthy diet. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has adopted the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD) for annual tracking alongside other food security indicators. This indicator is relevant in many countries for informed decision-making and accountability toward food systems summit pathways. National governments may wish to include this indicator in their own monitoring systems, using existing subnational price and income data.
Objectives
We describe emerging systems in several countries for monitoring CoAHD and analytical tools that facilitate the calculation of CoAHD. We discuss reasons why the indicator may differ when calculated using subnational data compared with the global monitoring system and how to interpret differences.
Methods
Between June 2016 and February 2024, 19 workshops were held in 7 countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Viet Nam), where stakeholder discussions covered sources of food price data, institutions involved, policy uses, and direct training in calculation of CoAHD. Food price data collected by national organizations were used to calculate CoAHD in partnership with government agencies.
Results
Calculating CoAHD using subnational data uses the same methods across settings, but the mechanisms for monitoring and dissemination are different in each country, illustrating heterogeneity in how the metric can most effectively be incorporated within existing structures. Results from national and global monitoring systems have expected differences based on data sources, healthy diet standards, and affordability standards.
Conclusions
CoAHD can be calculated with existing data and resources, facilitated by new software tools and user tutorials. In the future, it can be further streamlined, leveraging technical assistance from global institutions and aligning national and global monitoring systems.

True costs of food production in Kenya and Vietnam

Many countries aim for sustainable food systems, which provide nutritious food equitably without compromising economic, social and environmental objectives. However, most food systems generate substantial unaccounted impacts in the environmental, social and health spheres. These impacts are not reflected in the market prices of goods or services. True cost accounting (TCA) is a method that adds up both direct and external costs to find the «true cost» of food production (Figure 1). TCA systematically measures and values external costs to facilitate sustainable choices by decisionmakers.

Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets and declining purchasing power of casual wage laborers: December 2021–June 2024

We assess changes in food prices and purchasing power of casual wage laborers based on large-scale surveys of households and food vendors (fielded from December 2021 until June 2024) in rural and urban areas and in all states/regions of Myanmar.

Key Findings:

 Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, diet costs rose steadily by 40 and 41 percent for healthy and common diet costs, respectively.

 The median price of rice—the major staple—increased by 54 percent between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024 and was the main driver of the 41 percent increase in the cost of the common diet.

 The most conflict-affected states suffered more from food price inflation. Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, common diet costs increased by 81 percent in Rakhine, 61 percent in Chin, and 48 percent in Kachin. In the second quarter of 2024, both healthy and common diet costs were highest in Rakhine followed by Chin.

 Over the full period of surveys (December 2021–June 2024), the cost of the healthy diet rose by 121 percent and the common diet by 131 percent; rice and onion prices more than tripled; pulse, chicken, leafy green, and banana prices at least doubled; and all other food prices increased by at least 50 percent.

 Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, purchasing power of daily urban construction wages relative to healthy and common diet costs declined by about 14 percent. The purchasing power of rural agricultural wages to healthy and common diet costs fell by about 4 percent. Adjusted for the cost of one kilogram of rice, urban construction wages fell by 25 percent and rural agricultural wages fell by 14 percent.

 Food costs outpaced wages, particularly in urban areas, making food increasingly unaffordable for wage earners who are among the most vulnerable household groups in Myanmar. However, nominal wages rose at a faster pace between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024 compared to 2022 and 2023, slowing the pace of declining real wages.

The true costs of food production in Kenya and Viet Nam

Sustainable agrifood systems (AFS) provide food security and nutrition without compromising economic, social, and environmental objectives. However, many AFS generate substantial unaccounted for environmental, social, and health costs. True cost accounting (TCA) is one method that adds direct and external costs to find the “true cost” of food production, which can inform policies to reduce externalities or adjust market prices. We find that for Kenya— considering the entire food system, including crops, livestock, fishing, and value addition sectors at the national level—external costs represent 35 percent of the output value. Social costs account for 73 percent of the total external costs, while environmental costs are 27 percent. In contrast, in Viet Nam, where total external costs represent 15 percent of the output value, the environmental costs (75 percent) dominate social costs. At the subnational level, in the three Kenyan counties (Kisumu, Vihiga, and Kajiado) covered by the CGIAR Research Initiative on Nature-Positive Solutions (NATURE+), external costs (or the true cost gap) represent about 30 percent of all household crop production costs. Those external costs are overwhelmingly dominated by social (84 percent) over environmental (16 percent) externalities. In Viet Nam's Sa Pa and Mai Son districts, external costs represent about 24 percent of all household crop production costs. Environmental externalities (61 percent) are greater than social ones (39 percent). In Kenya, forced labor is the main social (and overall) external impact driven by factors ranging from "less severe" financial coercion to "more severe" forms of physical coercion. Land occupation is the most important environmental impact, resulting from occupation of lands for cultivation rather than conservation, while underpayment (low wages) and low profits are important social costs that are closely associated with the prevailing gender wage gap and occurrence of harassment. Soil degradation is the only other environmental impact, linked with the use of inorganic fertilizers (60 percent of households) and pesticides (36 percent). In Viet Nam, land occupation is the most important external impact, followed by soil degradation and contributions to climate change, primarily due to widespread use of inorganic fertilizers (98 percent of households) and pesticides (93 percent). Underpayment and insufficient income are significant social costs, followed by the gender wage gap and child labor. Crop production systems in Kenya exhibit relatively high labor-related costs compared with nonlabor inputs, with relatively lower intensity in the use of inorganic fertilizer and other chemical inputs and lower crop yields. This production system leads to relatively greater social externalities. Conversely, crop yields in Viet Nam are significantly higher than those in Kenya, likely due to the extensive use of inorganic fertilizers representing the largest direct cost component and leading to a relatively higher level of environmental externalities. Because external costs represent a significant part of the total cost of food production, policy and investments to minimize these costs are essential to a nature-positive AFS that is environmentally sustainable and socially equitable. Strategies to reach this goal include regulatory adjustments, investments in resource efficient infrastructure and technologies that minimize costs, and the prudent management of environmentally impactful production inputs and factors.

2022 Social Accounting Matrix for Cambodia: A Nexus Project SAM

The 2022 Cambodia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) follows IFPRI's Standard Nexus SAM approach, by focusing on consistency, comparability, and transparency of data. The Nexus SAMs available on IFPRI's website separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital, with labor further disaggregated across three education-based categories. The household account is divided into 10 representative household groups: Rural and urban households across per capita consumption quintiles. Nexus SAMs support the improvement of model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries and allow for more robust cross-country comparisons of national economic structures, especially agriculture-food systems.

Intrahousehold food distribution in the Philippines: A food share over energy share perspective

The Mekong is in transition, what does it mean for food security?

Communities along the Mekong River are already seeing their food access shrink as the climate worsens. Smart imminent solutions could ease the burden.

From streets to tables: Bottom-up cocreation case studies for healthier food environments in Vietnam and Nigeria

Current food systems fail to provide equity, sustainability, and positive health outcomes, thus underscoring the critical need for their transformation. Intervening in food environments holds substantial promise for contributing to this much-needed transformation. Despite scholars and practitioners often recognizing the necessity for bottom-up approaches, there is a dearth of empirical investigations evaluating the potential of these approaches to contribute to food system transformations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Our study aims to address this research gap, providing a unique perspective in this regard. Drawing on evidence from two co-creation case studies conducted with small-scale informal fruit and vegetable vendors and poor consumers in Vietnam and Nigeria from January 2020 to December 2021, we explore the relevance of bottom-up community-engaged co-creation processes in intervening within LMICs’ food retail environments. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, participatory workshops, and focus group discussions, we demonstrate that bottom-up co-creation processes involving marginalized socioeconomic groups can generate retail-level innovations that are tailored to informal retail contexts, while remaining aligned with established top-down theories and literature pertaining to food environments and healthy diets. We provide empirical evidence highlighting how both vendors and consumers respond positively to the co-created innovations. Expanding upon our results, we offer methodological insights applicable to interventions targeted at food environments in LMICs, and considerations for future research or development initiatives in this domain. Our findings reveal the capacity of vulnerable stakeholders to actively engage in public health initiatives and contribute to developing innovative solutions that are context-specific and conducive to the adoption of healthier dietary practices. These results confirm the potential of bottom-up, co-creation, real-world interventions within informal settings to contribute towards fostering inclusive transformation of food systems.

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

Outsource agricultural service enterprises emerged a century ago in high-income countries and in the past several decades in developing regions. We contribute by analyzing and illustrating the emergence of these services from the perspective of phases of the Product Cycle. These services help farmers adapt to international and domestic agrifood value chains: (1) in the commoditization phase, e.g., with rice combine harvesting services in China and Myanmar for domestic and export markets; (2) in the early product differentiation phase into quality traits, e.g., with horticultural services to Ethiopian and Indonesian farmers for urban wholesale markets; (3) in the advanced product differentiation phase into environmental traits, e.g., with A-Z services to help French farmers grow eco-labeled vegetables for supermarkets. These services addressed farmers’ shortfalls in information, skills, labor, and equipment. The services are supplied by medium/large farmers with excess capacity say of a combine; by wholesalers who want to reduce search costs and risks; by input “agro-dealers”; and by agribusinesses servicing their outgrowers. In new cases shown in France, outsource firms partner with farm input companies such as Bayer or with robot/drone companies. Governments have – and can do much more to – support the emergence of these services such as in developing regions today through: (1) promotion of a business ecosystem, based on policies of investment in hard and soft infrastructure, favoring the coadaptation of these firms with farmers’ needs; (2) policies facilitating access, such as through import liberalization, of equipment and seeds and chemicals.

An ex-ante analysis of the impact of biofortified zinc rice on dietary zinc inadequacy: Evidence from Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines

Background: South, East, and Southeast Asia are among the regions of the world with the highest estimated prevalence of inadequate zinc intake. Because populations in those regions eat rice as their main staple, zinc biofortification of rice can potentially improve zinc intake, especially among the most vulnerable.
Objectives: We modeled the impact of the consumption of zinc-biofortified rice on zinc intake and inadequacy among women of childbearing age and young children nationally in Indonesia, the Philippines, and at a subnational level in Bangladesh.
Methods: We conducted an ex-ante analysis by applying increments of zinc content in rice, from a baseline level of 16 parts per million (ppm) to 100 ppm, and based on rice consumption data to substitute levels of conventional rice with zinc-biofortified rice varying between 10% and 70%.
Results: Among all datasets evaluated from these 3 countries, the prevalence of dietary zinc inadequacy at baseline was 94%–99% among women of childbearing age, 77%–100% among children 4–5 y old, and 27%–78% among children 1–3 y old. At the current breeding target of 28 ppm, zinc-biofortified rice has the potential to decrease zinc inadequacy by ≤50% among women and children in rural Bangladesh and among children in the Philippines where consumption of rice is higher compared with Indonesia.
Conclusions: Our analysis shows that increasing zinc content in rice ≤45 ppm reduces the burden of zinc inadequacy substantially, after which we encourage programs to increase coverage to reach the highest number of beneficiaries.

Addressing food system transformation, food security, and deforestation in Indonesia: Challenges and opportunities

This study identifies food system interventions with high transformational potential for Indonesia by utilizing the MIRAGRODEP a multi-region, multisector computable general equilibrium model to analyze policy scenarios. Our findings reveal a range of economic, social, and environmental impacts. Initiatives such as social safety nets and food stamps can enhance affordability, while repurposing farm subsidies can improve socio-economic sustainability. Comprehensive policy packages that include social safety nets, repurposing agricultural supports, environmental regulation and investment in sustainable production, can lead to substantial GDP growth, poverty reduction, and dietary enhancements. However, each intervention presents distinct trade-offs between economic gains and environmental implications. This analysis underscores the need for a holistic policy approach when trying to achieve multiple sustainability goals. Implementing a blend of policies designed to promote environmental, social, and economic sustainability simultaneously could drive Indonesia towards a sustainable and resilient food system, addressing the complex interplay between economic development, environmental conservation, and improved nutrition.

Climate smart agriculture and food systems that reduce poverty and hunger

Poor communities that rely on functioning food systems for their livelihoods are highly vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change while agri-food systems are significant emitters of greenhouse gases. This chapter reviews opportunities to scale up innovative technology and practices to transform food systems and to leverage climate action to reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition in line with the complementary Sustainable Development Goals. Drawing on country experiences – India, Tajikistan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Myanmar – with integrated strategies, it looks at how climate strategies such as nationally determined contributions can be aligned with national agricultural and antipoverty strategies; the need for multisector and multistakeholder action and participation; challenges to joint financing for climate action, poverty and hunger goals; and adapting government and donor systems to co-ordinate implementation.

Nature-Positive Solutions initiative baseline evaluation survey report: Vietnam

The report’s main objective is to describe socio-economic conditions and agricultural systems in the survey areas. It provides a baseline assessment characterizing the main agricultural and socioeconomic challenges within the surveyed localities, and to inform the array of research interventions currently underway. Furthermore, the study will provide a baseline for estimating the impacts of NATURE+ (including waste management, water management, development or a resilient seed system, development of value chains for neglected and underutilized species, participatory varietal selection, encouragement of designs for increasing agrobiodiversity, etc.) on inclusion, poverty reduction, as well as on food security, livelihoods, and jobs. The report is structured as follows: Section 2 presents detailed information on the survey design, its coverage and implementation. Sections 3 and 4 discuss the main analytical results of the report, separately for the household and the workers survey, respectively. Finally, section 5 concludes.

Preconception micronutrient supplementation positively affects offspring cognition at 10–11 years of age: A randomized controlled trial in Vietnam

Objectives: The importance of maternal periconceptional nutrition for offspring health and development has received increased attention recently, yet very few intervention studies have evaluated the long-term effects on offspring growth and cognitive outcomes. We evaluated the impact of preconception weekly multiple micronutrients (MM) or iron and folic acid (IFA) supplementation compared to folic acid (FA) alone on offspring body composition and cognitive function during the school-age years and early adolescence.

The relationship between preterm and small for gestational age on child cognition during school-age years

Objectives: Children born preterm and/or small for gestational age (SGA) have a high susceptibility to neurological impairments that may affect cognitive and learning outcomes during school age and beyond. Yet, limited evidence exists for these high-risk birth phenotypes in low and middle-income countries where most occur with different etiology and socio-biology. This paper examined the deficits in cognitive function and academic achievement during the school age years in children born preterm or SGA compared to term adequate for gestational age (AGA) in rural Vietnam.

Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS), Round 4

The Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS) is a nationwide phone panel consisting of approximately 5,500 households. The objective of the survey is to collect data on farm characteristics and agricultural assets, area and crops planted, access to inputs, crop marketing, and constraints in agricultural activities. The respondents interviewed are a sub-sample of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey. A novel sampling strategy in combination with the development of household and population weights allows for estimates that are nationally, regionally, and urban/rural representative. MAPS Round 4 survey was implemented by phone by Myanmar Survey Research (MSR) from June to July, 2023. The MAPS Round 4 sample has 5,001 combined respondents from Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) Round 5 and MAPS Round 3. This includes 1,342 respondents not previously interviewed for any round of MAPS but interviewed in MHWS. MAPS Round 4 compares agricultural production in the pre/post monsoon 2022 and the pre/post monsoon 2023.

The demographic transition and rural industrialization in China

The relationships between optimal infant feeding practices and child development and attained height at age 2 years and 6–7 years

Limited evidence exists on the long-term effects of early feeding practices on child growth and development. We examined the relationships between infant feeding practices and child height and development at ages 2 and 6–7 years. We studied 885 mother–child dyads from a randomized controlled trial of preconception supplementation in Vietnam. Early initiation of breastfeeding (EIBF), exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), breastfeeding (BF) duration and minimum dietary diversity (MDD) were assessed using World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Child development was assessed by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III at 2 years and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children® – IV at 6–7 years. Child height-for-age z-score (HAZ) was calculated from child height and age. Multivariable regression and structural equation models were used in analyses that controlled for confounding. EIBF and EBF at 6 months occurred in 52% and 62% of children, respectively. Mean breastfeeding duration was 18 months and 83% achieved MDD at 1 year. EIBF was associated with motor (β = 0.13, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.00, 0.28) and cognitive development at 2 years (β = 0.12, 95% CI: −0.01, 0.26), which in turn were positively associated with cognitive development at 6–7 years. EBF was directly associated with development at 6–7 years (β = 0.21, 95% CI:0.08, 0.34) whereas motor and cognitive development at 2 years explained 41%–75% of the relationship between EIBF and development at 6–7 years. HAZ at 2 years also mediated 70% of the association between MDD at 1 year and HAZ at 6–7 years. BF duration was not associated with child development and HAZ. Early infant feeding practices, especially EIBF and EBF, have important long-term implications for optimizing child linear growth and cognition as they begin school.

Low Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) among adolescents in Vietnam is due to inadequate consumption of fruits and vegetables rather than high consumption of unhealthy foods

Objectives: Rapid urbanization coupled with a nutrition transition has catalyzed significant shifts in lifestyle and diets in mega-cities around the world, but the impacts on adolescent diets are poorly understood. This study aims to fill this gap, comparing diet quality (measured by the Global Diet Quality Score, GDQS) and adequacy of micronutrient intakes among adolescents in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas of Vietnam.

Methods: We collected data on adolescents (11-19 y) from low-income neighborhoods in urban (n=868), peri-urban (n=937), and rural (n=1056) areas and assessed dietary intake using multi-pass 24-hour recalls (15% repeated measures). We classified foods consumed into 25 GDQS food groups (score 0-49; GDQS healthy (+): 0-32; unhealthy (-): 0-17), with a higher score reflecting a lower risk of poor diet quality. Nutrient intakes were derived using food composition tables; and micronutrient probability of adequacy (PA) was calculated using the National Cancer Institute (NCI) method. Differences in diet quality and adequacy by residence were compared using ANOVA with Bonferroni post-hoc tests.

Results: GDQS+ was low (6.6-7.1 over 32 points) while GDQS- was ∼11 over 17 points across the three areas. The risk of poor diet quality was slightly higher in rural (23.4%) than peri-urban (18.5%) and urban areas (17.1%), and was driven by low consumption of healthy foods (fruits, vegetables, legumes, and eggs) rather than excessive consumption of unhealthy foods. Refined grains and baked goods were universally consumed, but sweets, ice cream, and sugar-sweetened beverages were consumed by 20% or less of our sample. Consumption of high-fat dairy (32.9%) and red meat (74%) was higher in urban compared to rural areas. The PA of micronutrient intakes was low (< 0.5) for most micronutrients except iron, zinc and vitamin C and mean PA was very low (0.32-0.35). Conclusions: Diet quality among Vietnamese adolescents is generally poor across residential areas, mostly due to inadequate consumption of healthy foods. The very low PA for micronutrients across all three areas is concerning. Efforts are needed to stimulate increased consumption of healthy foods, to reduce consumption of red meat and replace high-fat dairy with low-fat options, and to maintain a low consumption of other unhealthy foods.

It's all in the stars: The Chinese zodiac and the effects of parental investments on offspring's cognitive and noncognitive skill development

Parental investments in children's cognitive and noncognitive outcomes are deeply important to policymakers. However, because parental investments are arguably endogenous, estimating their importance empirically poses a challenge. To address this challenge, this paper exploits a rich and novel dataset, the China Family Panel Studies, and proposes a culture‐specific instrumental variable based on the Chinese zodiac. By comparing the outcomes of children born just before and just after the cutoff for a “lucky” (or ‘unlucky’) zodiac sign, we find that parents' investments have significant effects on offspring's development of both cognitive and noncognitive skills.

The true costs of food in Kenya and Vietnam: A conceptual framework

Sustainable food systems provide enough quality, healthy, and affordable food to all without imposing a burden on planetary and social boundaries. By this standard, it is quite clear that food systems in many countries are not sustainable as they generate substantial environmental, social, and health costs while failing to provide affordable food to all (FAO et al., 2020). This implies the need to have a good understanding of the extent to which those externalities are present in country specific food systems. The key challenge is that such externalities are not reflected in market prices (Baker et al., 2020), being therefore hidden factors to drivers of choices by market players, as the link between market activity and those social and environmental harms is not directly visible or reflected in the incentives that drive economic systems (UNFSS, 2021). Internalizing the externalities of the food systems will require the full estimation of costs, including the measurement of externalities through “True Cost Accounting” (TCA) approaches. This document provides the analytical framework for the application of approaches in a research study to measure the true costs of food in Kenya and Vietnam.
It focuses on:
o Key research questions, their relevance, and policy implications
o How the TCA analytical framework fits in The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) framework
o Country selection and geographic focus – national, sub-national
o Data requirements for estimating the true costs, including household surveys, workers’ surveys, externally compiled Global Impact Database (GID), and monetization factors.
o A step-by-step process for estimating the true costs in the study area and country level GID analysis.

Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey Round Four: Note on Sample Characteristics and Weighting

The Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS) is a nationally and sub-nationally representative phone survey with the objective of collecting bi-annual data on agricultural indicators including crop production and sales, input use, crop marketing, farm and livestock assets, and farm services. The Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS)is a nationally and sub‐nationally representative phone survey with the objective of collecting quarterly data on household and individual welfare indicators, including poverty, food security, dietary quality, subjective wellbeing, and coping strategies. MAPS is a sub-sample survey that includes farming households from MHWS. There are four Rounds of MAPS. MAPS Rounds 1 and 3 were conducted between January and March 2022 and 2023 and collect recall data on monsoon production. MAPS Round 2 and 4 were conducted between June and September 2022 and 2023 and collect recall data on dry season production (pre/post monsoon season). MAPS Round 4 consists of 11 modules (A-K) that are each included in the clean dataset and unique by household ID (hhid). Modules A, B, and J are introductory and closing modules that only include information on the call and confirmation of demographic information connected to MHWS. The remaining modules provide data on farmer demographics and agricultural production and marketing. Module C consists of background and demographic information. This includes data on farmer demographics along with farm area and crops grown. Module D provides data on rice production and sales for pre/post monsoon 2022 and 2023, including rice variety, amounts produced and sold, and farmgate prices. Module E contains similar information to Module D but pertaining to pulses and oilseeds. Module F consists of data on farm input use including purchased inputs, mechanization, labor, and the effect of natural shocks. Module G presents information on crop marketing and Module H provides data on farm and livestock assets. Module I contains data on farm services including agricultural extension, credit, mobility issues in the community, travel times to access services, contract farming, crop residues, and changes in rice consumption and paddy growing practices. Module K contains information on change in rice consumption and paddy growing practices.

Supporting agrifood systems transformation in Indonesia with governance innovation

This policy brief summarizes the background, evidence and insights from the innovative governance modelling and analysis work developed in Indonesia under the "Governance Innovation for Sustainable Development of Food Systems” subprogramme. In addition, the brief offers guiding points and recommendations to support Indonesia's agrifood systems transformation efforts. The FVC subprogramme was carried out between 2020 and 2023 with funds from FAO's Flexible Voluntary Contribution (FVC). Together with Indonesia's national agency for planning and the Ministry of Agriculture as co-convener, the subprogramme supported the Directorate for Food and Agriculture in the Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS) leading the consolidation and implementation of the agrifood systems transformation agenda, including the UNFSS follow-up. The modelling and analytical work was conducted by a pool of researchers from the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel (CAU), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The researchers elaborated their analysis on the concrete priorities of the country and provided insights about the agrifood systems’ performance, mapping synergies and potential trade-offs across identified interventions. The information package included an examination of the interests, roles, and contributions of stakeholders, allowing for the identification of alliances and coordination needed to ensure the coordination needed to ensure the political feasibility of their agrifood systems transformation plans.

Modelling the impacts of policy interventions for agrifood systems transformation in Indonesia

The Government of Indonesia and FAO have recognized the need for thorough analysis and modelling of Indonesia’s agrifood systems to support agrifood systems transformation efforts in the country. This is needed to provide a better understanding of the governance context in agrifood systems, including the political economy dynamics influencing performance, as well as to identify synergies and trade-offs across different policy goals and optimal policy mixes for achieving multiple policy objectives. In this regard, FAO facilitated a project to pilot an innovative approach to modelling for food systems transformation. This modelling approach was developed and implemented by a team of researchers from IFPRI, IIASA, IISD and Christian-Albrechts- University of Kiel. It uses three different economic models to generate insights that can assist Indonesian policymakers in developing technically sound and politically feasible policy interventions for agrifood systems transformation. This report provides context for agrifood systems transformation in Indonesia and describes the overall modelling approach before synthesizing the results of the individual modelling activities and distilling these into the overall findings of the modelling. It concludes with implications from these findings for policymaking for agrifood systems transformation in Indonesia and suggestions for the next steps. The results of this modelling and the insights drawn from these results are expected to support efforts to translate Indonesia’s commitments on agrifood systems transformation into concrete policy interventions and to inform medium- and long-term development planning by the Indonesian Government.

Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS) Monsoon Season 2024: Agricultural input markets, credit and extension services

This note provides an overview of agricultural input access and utilization for the monsoon season 2023 based on a nationally and regionally representative sample of 4,663 crop farmers undertaken in January 22 to March 7, 2024.
Key Findings
 Fertilizer use rates and profitability for rice production reached their highest levels since before the coup during the 2023 monsoon season, driven primarily by higher paddy prices. Application rates for monsoon season paddy increased to 66 kg/acre from 54 kg/acre in the previous monsoon. Urea application increased from 33 kg/acre to 38 kg/acre, and non-urea fertilizers (mainly compound 15-15-15) increased from 21 kg/acre to 28 kg/acre.
 The benefit-cost ratio of urea application to paddy crops averaged 2.3 at the urea sales price reported by agri-input dealers and 2.0 at farmer reported urea prices. These ratios imply a return on investment in urea fertilizer for the farmer of 130 percent at input dealer prices and 100 percent at average famer-reported prices. The difference in reported prices likely reflects interest charges and local transport costs from the dealer to the farm.
 Access to mechanization services, tractors and combine harvesters was similar in monsoon 2023 compared to a year earlier, but costs increased dramatically. Plowing with a four-wheel tractor, for example, increased by 42 percent to 60,000 MMK/acre. The cost of combine harvesting averaged 110,000 MMK/acre. Timeliness of access was likely reduced as fuel shortages increased, especially in conflict areas.
 The share of farmers using saved paddy seed increased from 56 percent to 61 percent nationally for use in the 2023 monsoon season compared to a year before. There were important differences across states and regions. The share of farmers purchasing seed in conflict areas fell more than the national average; by 11 percentage points in Mandalay, 7 percentage points in Rakhine, 6 percentage points in Tanintharyi, and 5 percentage points in Mon State.
 Eighty-four percent of farms hired labor in the 2023 monsoon season, slightly higher than the previous monsoon season. Male wages rose to 8,800 MMK/day in the 2023 monsoon season from almost 7,400 MMK/day in the previous monsoon, an increase of 19 percent.
 Despite large nominal increases, real wages for men and women nevertheless fell as the cost of a typical daily diet which rose 37 percent over the period February 2023 to March 2024.
 Access to internet or mobile phone services increased by 3 percentage points from 15 percent to 18 percent, and access to private sector services increased by almost 3 percentage points from 18.0 percent to 20.6 percent. Increases in private extension access favored producers of cash crops, notably betel leaves, cotton, rice and maize. Internet or mobile phone services were sought out by producers of cotton, rice, betel leaves and pulses, again primarily cash crops.

Recommendations
 Improvements in the geographical coverage and content of mobile phone extension services could play an important role in offsetting reductions in in-person extension access. This is an opportunity for development partners to have a positive impact without increasing risk to beneficiaries or implementing partner staff.
 The prevalence of local farmers as a seed source indicates that mobile extension services targeting informal seed producers could be important, along with facilitating access to certified seed for multiplication. As nearly all chemical input distributors and machinery service providers depend on imports, access to foreign exchange is critically important. Further sharp depreciation of the Myanmar Kyat will lead to increases in prices for the coming post-monsoon season.

Tracking Maternal and Child Anthropometric Outcomes, Early Childhood Development, Maternal Mental Health and Household Welfare in urban Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: A Description of the 11th Round of The Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS) conducted in October-November 2023

Myanmar's population has become increasingly at risk of malnutrition due to political turmoil, armed conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruptions, price fluctuations, and erratic weather patterns (MAPSA 2024; MAPSA 2023). However, given the fragile situation with respect to conflict, crime and poor governance, conducting face-to-face data collection is challenging (Lambrecht et al. 2023; Boughton et al. 2023), and there is a particular scarcity of anthropometric data since this cannot be collected via phone surveys. To redress this knowledge gap, IFPRI partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)- Myanmar to conduct an in-person survey that revisited households previously surveyed in 2020-2021 by phone. This Rural-Urban Food Security interviewed mothers or caregivers of young children and collected anthropometric measurements in-person between October – November 2023. Out of approximately 1,500 mothers who participated in at least one round of the previous phone survey, we successfully followed up with 702 mother-child pairs located mainly in peri-urban Yangon, with a small subset of households in rural Ayeyarwady. This paper describes the implementation of this survey and the reports key results from the questionnaire in order to provide readers with a clear understanding of the sample and its key socioeconomic characteristics, as well as comparability to two national surveys with representative Yangon sub-samples: the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) conducted in 2023 and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in 2015-16. Results of this comparison suggest that the RUFSS sample of caregivers (mostly mothers) is broadly comparable to the DHS in terms of education levels. Thus, while the RUFSS sample should not be interrupted as representative of mothers of young children in Yangon or their households – because we oversample peri-urban households – it nevertheless appears to be broadly comparable to the DHS in terms of caregiver education levels, which would one not expect to change rapidly over 2015-16 to 2023.

Prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity among mothers in Yangon and Ayeyarwady, October–November 2023

In this research note, we report results on the prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity among mothers of young children using data collected in Yangon and Ayeyarwady as part of the Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS). This in-person study, conducted between October–November 2023, surveyed mothers who were registered from antenatal clinics in peri-urban Yangon in early 2020. In this latest survey round, we revisited this sample of mother-child pairs to gather anthropometric data (along with other nutrition-relevant indicators). We successfully collected anthropometric data for 646 mothers.

Feasibility of using an artificial intelligence-based telephone application for dietary assessment and nudging to improve the quality of food choices of female adolescents in Vietnam: Evidence from a randomized pilot study

Background
Adolescent nutrition has faced a policy neglect, partly owing to the gaps in dietary intake data for this age group. The Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI) is a smartphone application validated for dietary assessment and to influence users toward healthy food choices.

Objectives
This study aimed to assess the feasibility (adherence, acceptability, and usability) of FRANI and its effects on food choices and diet quality in female adolescents in Vietnam.

Methods
Adolescents (N = 36) were randomly selected from a public school and allocated into 2 groups. The control group received smartphones with a version of FRANI limited to dietary assessment, whereas the intervention received smartphones with gamified FRANI. After the first 4 wk, both groups used gamified FRANI for further 2 wk. The primary outcome was the feasibility of using FRANI as measured by adherence (the proportion of completed food records), acceptability and usability (the proportion of participants who considered FRANI acceptable and usable according to answers of a Likert questionnaire). Secondary outcomes included the percentage of meals recorded, the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDDW) and the Eat-Lancet Diet Score (ELDS). Dietary diversity is important for dietary quality, and sustainable healthy diets are important to reduce carbon emissions. Poisson regression models were used to estimate the effect of gamified FRANI on the MDDW and ELDS.

Results
Adherence to the application was 82% and the percentage of meals recorded was 97%. Acceptability and usability were 97%. MDDW in the intervention group was 1.07 points (95% CI: 0.98, 1.18; P = 0.13) greater than that in the control (constant = 4.68); however, the difference was not statistically significant. Moreover, ELDS in the intervention was 1.09 (95% CI: 1.01, 1.18; P = 0.03) points greater than in the control (constant = 3.67).

Conclusions
FRANI was feasible and may be effective to influence users toward healthy food choices. Research is needed for FRANI in different contexts and at scale.

Food systems interventions for nutrition: Lessons from 6 program evaluations in Africa and South Asia

While there is growing global momentum behind food systems strategies to improve planetary and human health—including nutrition—there is limited evidence of what types of food systems interventions work. Evaluating these types of interventions is challenging due to their complex and dynamic nature and lack of fit with standard evaluation methods. In this paper, we draw on a portfolio of six evaluations of food systems interventions in Africa and South Asia that were intended to improve nutrition. We identify key methodological challenges and formulate recommendations to improve the quality of such studies. We highlight five challenges: a lack of evidence base to justify the intervention; the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the interventions; addressing attribution; collecting or accessing accurate and timely data; and defining and measuring appropriate outcomes. In addition to more specific guidance, we identify six cross-cutting recommendations, including a need to use multiple and diverse methods and flexible designs. We also note that these evaluation challenges present opportunities to develop new methods and highlight several specific needs in this space.

Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (Monsoon 2023): Farming environment and farm commercialization

We have analyzed the farming environment and farm commercialization situation for the 2023 monsoon season from the Myanmar Agriculture Performance Survey (MAPS), conducted at the beginning of 2024. This survey encompassed almost 4,400 crop producers in the monsoon, distributed across all states/regions of the country. Our findings reveal:
1. The security situation in Myanmar continues to pose concerns for farmers, impacting their commercialization practices. During the interview period (January – March 2024):
1.1) 31 percent of farmers reported feeling 'very insecure' or 'insecure'.
1.2) 22 percent expressed serious security concerns while moving around.
1.3) 8 percent stated that conflict in their area prevented the cultivation of some agricultural fields.
1.4) 1.4 percent reported land confiscation as a problem in their community.
1.5) 11 percent indicated fear of storing produce at home due to the risk of confiscation or destruction.
2. Security challenges for farming vary across states and regions, with the Delta area - the country's rice bowl - experiencing relatively better conditions.
3. Limited access to fuel, crucial for irrigation and mechanization among others, poses a significant constraint to farming. Nationally, about a quarter of Burmese farmers reported either no or rare availability of fuel in their communities during the monsoon and post/premonsoon periods. This situation is exacerbated in conflict-affected areas such as Rakhine, Chin, and Kayah, with Rakhine experiencing a dramatic worsening in recent months, with 81 percent of farmers reporting fuel scarcity in the post/pre-monsoon period.
4. Agricultural inputs were generally accessible during the 2023 monsoon season, indicating the resilience of the private sector in delivering these inputs. However, 4 percent of farmers reported unavailability of chemical fertilizers, while 6 percent faced difficulties in accessing mechanization and 18 percent in securing agricultural labor.
5. Input prices increased during the 2023 monsoon compared to the same period in 2022, with mechanized plowing costs rising by 20 percent, and hired labor costs for men and women increasing by 19 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Conversely, urea prices decreased by 15 percent.
6. In the post/pre-monsoon of 2024, wages saw substantial increases compared to the monsoon, especially for men, with a 15 percent rise, possibly linked to the new conscription law.
7. Nearly all crop prices increased compared to the previous monsoon. Paddy prices surged by 64 percent. Conversely, maize prices experienced an 11 percent decrease, likely due to transportation issues via Myawaddy, the border town for trade with Thailand.
8. Most farmers reported higher crop sales income this year compared to the previous one. However, 14 percent of farmers reported lower sales incomes.
9. Farmers in remote and conflict-affected areas face significant disadvantages in farm commercialization. Insecurity and isolation are primarily linked to higher input costs, while output prices are similar or lower compared to secure and well-connected areas. Consequently, farming profitability in these regions is reduced, impacting farmers' income and welfare.

Conflict and agricultural performance: Evidence from Myanmar

Recent years have witnessed an escalation in conflict, especially in developing countries where a significant proportion of the population relies on agriculture. It is crucial to understand how these conflicts impact agricultural production, given its importance for food security and agricultural transformation in these regions. However, research exploring how persistent conflicts affect agriculture is still nascent. Our study adds to this body of research by establishing a causal link between ongoing conflicts and their impact on paddy production, a primary staple crop in Myanmar. This analysis is based on data from a nationally representative phone survey conducted amidst active conflicts. We find that conflict adversely affects paddy production in various ways, including decreases in production and yield, as well as decreases in farmgate prices and the value of production. Our analysis reveals that conflict events, particularly those targeting civilians, have more pronounced negative effects on paddy production, yield, farmgate prices, and the value of production compared to non-targeted conflict incidents that do not purposively target civilians but could potentially disrupt input and output markets. The timing of conflict also significantly affects paddy production, with incidents occurring in mid-season, and during pre-planting and planting periods being the most damaging. Conflict leads to a decrease in the land area devoted to paddy cultivation, lowered probability and intensity of compound fertilizer usage, and an increased reliance on possibly lower quality seeds and exchange labor use. Our findings provide timely and informative insights for development partners and policy frameworks, highlighting the need for emergency assistance and intervention strategies to mitigate the impact of conflict and enhance resilience in areas vulnerable to conflict and instability.

“Fruit basket upset”: Spatially explicit crop mixture responses to climatic and economic pressures

Purpose
The choice of crops to produce at a location depends to a large degree on the climate. As the climate changes and food demand evolves, farmers may need to produce a different mix of crops. This study assesses how much cropland may be subject to such upheavals at the global scale, and then focuses on China as a case study to examine how spatial heterogeneity informs different contexts for adaptation within a country.

Design/methodology/approach
A global agricultural economic model is linked to a cropland allocation algorithm to generate maps of cropland distribution under historical and future conditions. The mix of crops at each location is examined to determine whether it is likely to experience a major shift.

Findings
Two-thirds of rainfed cropland and half of irrigated cropland are likely to experience substantial upheaval of some kind.

Originality/value
This analysis helps establish a global context for the local changes that producers might face under future climate and socioeconomic changes. The scale of the challenge means that the agricultural sector needs to prepare for these widespread and diverse upheavals.

Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), Round 6

The sixth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS)–a nationwide phone panel consisting of 12,898 households–was implemented between August, 2023 and November, 2023. The objective of the survey was to collect data on a wide range of household and individual welfare indicators–including wealth, livelihoods, unemployment, food insecurity, diet quality, health shocks, and coping strategies–in a country exceptionally hard hit by conflict, severe economic collapse, and several damaging waves of COVID-19. The respondents interviewed in the MHWS were purposely selected from a large phone database aimed at being representative at the region/state level and urban/rural level in Myanmar. A novel sampling strategy in combination with the development of household and population weights allows for estimates that are nationally, regionally, and urban/rural representative.