The economy of Myanmar is still predominantly agricultural. Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of GDP, and provides employment to about 65% of the total workforce. The agricultural sector basides meeting domestic food requirement, it also produces a sizeble surplus for exoport. 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 of possible to increase the export volume of agricultural produce.
Mandalay Division is well known for the irrigation system essential for agricultural produce including paddy and products of Dry Zone. Only a little one third of its land were paddy land. Over 60% of its land were Yar land. Annual crops like cereals, pulses and industrial crops were grown by the majority of holdings. Government canals seemed to provide most of the irrigation. Only one third of land holding used irrigation and more irrigation will be needed to increase agricultural production.Use of draught animals was quite high but uses of HYV seeds, inorganic fertilizers, pesticides and machinery and equipment were not hight enough. Traditional farm implements were mostly used .Modern farming methods seemed to be adopted mostly by special land holdings and not enough by household-based land holdings.Since 95% of holders had schooling and most of them were well enough to own cattle and farm implements,it may be possible to encourage the houaehold-based holdings to apply modern farming technology, farm-machines and equipments more than the 1993 level.Ways means need to be found for providing farmers with improve new strains of HYV seeds, farm machineries at affordable prices, and for inducing farmers to adopt new landuse techniques as double or multiple cropping and growing summer crops .The 1993 census of agriculture collected information on agricultural holding and on selected agricultural activities.Efforts were needed to collect additional information on
(1) Cost of cultivation and Production, and
(2) Farm Income and Expenditure.
(3) On-farm and off-farm opportunities for income generation.
The information on farm income and cost of cultivation wold prove extremely useful in drafting and implemneting agricultural development programmes.
In order to have a complete picture of the agriculture sector in Mandalay 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 of agricultural chemicals.
GO TO HOME GO TO BACK