Recommendations

The economy of Myanmar is still predominantly agricultural. Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of GDP, and provides employment to about 65% of the total workfoce. The agricultural sector besides meeting domestic food requirement, it also produces a sizeable surplus for export.The recent increase in paddy production has been achieved mainly through higher yields rather than expanded acreage. The current drive of the government is to ensure self-sufficiency in food-production, guarantee raw material for local agro-based manufacturing industries and if possible to increase the export volume of agricultural produce.

Bago Division is one among the major rice producing regions of the country. The resource endowment of this division lends itself to promote reclamation of land for agricultural purposes. A disparity in income still exists between urban and rural areas. The expanding manfacturing sector arising from the development programmes has a great impact on the level of rural income and employment.Few household-based holdings could afford to use modern labour-saving farm-machinery but a large majority continued using implements like ploughs, rotary harrows, inter-cultivators, sickle etc. Ways and means need to be found for providing farmers with improved new stranis of HYV seeds, farm machineries at affordable prices, and for inducing farmers to adopt new land-use techniques as double or multiple cropping and growing summer crops.The 1993 census of agriculture collected information on agricultural holdings and on selected agricultural activies.Efforts were needed to collect additional information on

(1) Cost of cultivation and Production, and
(2) Farm Imcome and Expenditure.
(3) On-farm and off-farm opportunities for income generation.

The information on farm income and cost of cultivation would prove extremely useful in drafting and implementing agricultural development programmes.

In order to have a complete picture of the agriculture sector in Bago Division, there is an urgent need for additional information on the following characteristics.

(1) Means used to transport agricultural produce from the holdings,
(2) Area of land provided with drainage facilities,
(3) Production data of home-based small scale productive activities like wood products (handicraft) and fish products from agricultural land holdings,
(4) Use agricultural chemicals.


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