Major findings

The 1993 Agricultural Census was designed to provide a comprehensive description of the country's agricultural resources on the basis of information collected from agricultural holdings. The agricultural holding, which is an economic unit of production under a single management, normally represents all the land and livestock activities of a household. However, there are also special holdings owned and operated by state enterprise and private and public co-operatives and other institutions. Some findings of major interest are given below:

(1) 301,417 acres in Tanintharyi Division were distributed among 56,222 holdings; (89.21%) of total holdings. A majority of the land holdings (63.43%) was small farms under 5 acres in size, and only 0.23% were large frams extending over 50 acres; but the holding size of special land holdings, were 50 acres and above in size.

(2)86.40% of holders were males and only 13.60% were females; 91.48% of all holders had formal schooling indicating their capability to adopt improved techinques of production and to be responsive to effective extension services. 61.32% of holders worked permanently on holdings 66.76% of land holders had other sources of income.

(3) 29.51% of all holdings employed paid workers, 28.09% employed occasional workers, and only 5.73% employed permanent workers. A large portion of labour input was supplied by farm families. Among paid workers, the number of occasional workers was as much as 5 times greater than that of the permanent workers.

Special holdings however employed a comparatively larger percentage of hired labour, paid workers (66.67%), permanent workers (83.33%) and occasional workers (83.33%).

(4) A larger percentage of special land holdings used machinery and equipment than did household-based land holdings. 66.67% of special land holdings used water pumps, 43.75% used tractors, 50.00% used generator/ motors,6.25% used huller machines, 75.00% used power tillers, and 50.00% used other farm machinery. Among household-based land holdings, 0.11% of holdings used machinery and equipment other than huller machines, power tillers and tractors. 34.71% of household-based holdings used huller machine. Large farms had the advantage to adopt modern farm machinery.

(5) A comparatively larger percentage of special land holdings used agricultural chemicals, 68.75% used inorganic fertilizers, and 37.50% used organic fertilizers. The same is true with the use of pesticides and HYV seeds; 56.25% used pesticides and 25.00% HYV seeds.As in the case of capital inputs, large farms benifitted from the use of new techical know-how and modern methods of cultivation.

(6) Only 1.20% of land holdings used irrigation. Own wells, rivers, creeks and canals were the important sources of irrigation;they provided irrigation to 86.19% of household-based land holdings.

(7) 45.94% of the total area was paddy land, 31.57% was garden land, and 16.45% was rubber land.

(8) 99.14% of total area sown by household-based land holdings, and 97.86% of total area sown area by special holdings were under cereals. For household-based land holdings, the second most important crop sown was vegetables. It was followed by industrial crops. Among cereal, paddy was the main crop sown.

59.36% of household-based land holdings, and 21.43% of special holdings grew fruits and nuts. But in terms of total productive are, 36.25% of land operated by household-based holdings was under industrial permanent crops.

(9) 55.58% of all land holdings used draught animals. Regarding cattle and buffaloes, 35.84% of household-based land holdings owned cattle, and 17.07% owned buffaloes. The exetensive use of animal power seemed to reflect that further efforts were needed to modernize the existing mode of agricultural production.

(10) The average size of an agricultural holding was 5.12 acres. The average size of an agricultural household was 5. Nearly two in every 3 household-based land holdings had other sources of income. The average number of parcels per household-based land holding was 1.6, and the average size of a parcel was 3.18 acres. The average cultivation intensity was found was found to be 0.93. The proportion of land left fallow was about 0.08.


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