Written by Wen-Hao Wang,Photoed by Hsu-Yang Lin,Translated by Adam Tyrsett Kuo
For many Taiwanese in their 50s and 60s who grew up on farms, seeing rural villages in Myanmar brings back childhood memories — buffaloes in the fields; barefoot farmers planting seedlings; grain being harvested with sickles; paddy laid out to dry in the sun. Following the introduction of mechanized agriculture in Taiwan, these have long since become tourist attractions on “leisure farms.”
However, what we perceive to be romantic and nostalgic about agriculture represents the real-life struggles of farmers in Myanmar, a country in which smallholders account for a majority of the agricultural sector. The lack of irrigation and transportation infrastructure in rural areas; the lack of capital for purchasing advanced equipment; the lack of better means for people to store and deliver rice — these are all challenges that rice farmers in Myanmar face, whether in terms of maintaining self-sufficiency or boosting the country’s rice exports.
It is hard to imagine that back in the 1960s, Myanmar was the largest exporter of rice in the world, ahead of neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. However, when the totalitarian junta came to power, Myanmar became isolated, and as a result, the country’s technology for producing rice stayed largely the same since World War II. Gradually, Thailand overtook Myanmar to become the world’s largest rice exporter.
Myanmar has since embarked on a path toward reform and liberalization, and with driving economic development as its first priority, the country plans to regain its past glory as the “king of rice exporters.” This may strike the people of Taiwan, an island that once supported industrial growth with agriculture, as familiar, and for Taiwanese investors, Myanmar offers seemingly limitless opportunities.。
Given that Taiwan and Myanmar do not have diplomatic ties, agricultural exchange between Taiwan and Myanmar over the past couple years has been limited to occasional visits by officials; however, the private sector — businesses that sell agricultural equipment, farmers who oversee seedbeds, suppliers of greenhouse facilities — has already reached out to Myanmar in order to explore opportunities.
While Japan and South Korea have adopted a government-corporation coalition strategy to discuss economic cooperation with the government of Myanmar, Taiwanese investors face higher risks because they can only rely on themselves.
Hsu-yang Lin and Liang-tsai Wong, farmers from Yunlin and Taichung, were invited by Taiwanese investors to Pathein, the third largest city in Myanmar, to provide technical guidance to local farmers, hoping to share Taiwan’s farming knowledge and technology with Myanma farmers in order to help improve their lives.
Lin and Wong are farmers who grow and sell their own rice by profession. They helped established the “Taiwan Rice Farmers Corporation.” In addition to producing rice, they also sell seedlings to other farmers. Wong is a winner of the Council of Agriculture’s Shennong Award, and both farmers are representatives of Taiwan’s “refined agriculture” sector.
Pathein is the capital of Myanmar’s breadbasket, Ayeyarwady Region. It is located in the southwestern part of Myanmar, roughly 250 kilometers away from Yangon, and is the country’s largest rice-exporting center; Lin, however, who was born in the 1960s and raised on a farm, said that what he saw in the villages made him sigh.
In Taiwan, the roads in farming villages are straight, the irrigation systems are extensive, and the fields are organized into squares, but in Myanmar, a lot of farmers live in simple houses made of bamboo and straw, and their villages lack transportation planning and don’t have enough aqueducts, Lin said, adding that the livelihood of farmers in Myanmar is entirely at the mercy of weather conditions.
During the rainy season, farms are flooded because they lack drainage systems and their paddy fields become muddy, making it virtually impossible to use machinery, and during the dry season, due to a lack of rainwater storage facilities, they aren’t able to produce enough rice because of the water shortage, Lin explained.
In addition to these challenges, Lin also discovered a difference between farming practices in Taiwan and Myanmar. In Taiwan, seedlings are transplanted at a very early stage, but in Myanmar, farmers tend to transplant seedlings when it is too late, and as a result, the roots don’t have enough time to grow, which decreases the amount of nutrients that the plants take in, hampering overall output. Lin explained that in Taiwan, each hectare produces between 6 and 10 metric tons of rice, but in Myanmar, each hectare produces between 3 and 4 metric tons.
Furthermore, farmers in Myanmar often grow different crops on the same piece of land, which affects the quality of their harvest. And because of the lack of equipment, they dry their paddy in the sun, which causes the grain to break easily during milling because it wasn’t dried uniformly, affecting the overall quality of their rice. And as a result, a lot of the rice is sold off to be used as animal feed or for reprocessing.
Myanmar’s rice is of a superior variety and farmers in Myanmar work very hard, but unfortunately they lack skills and infrastructure, Wong said, adding that their technology has largely stayed the same since the latter half of World War II. If people could bring the experience and skills of Taiwan’s smallholders over to Myanmar, not only would they be able to help the farmers of Myanmar increase their output, but mostly importantly, they could help improve the lives of farmers in Myanmar.
“Myanmar has the best environment for growing rice, but it also has some the most poverty-stricken farmers,” Wong said, who was invited to Pathein as a technical advisor. He initially agreed to travel to Myanmar, thinking that there might be opportunities for investment.
But seeing the earnest, hardworking young farmers in Myanmar living under less than optimal conditions, Wong and Lin were moved to take action.
“As smallholders, we probably wouldn’t make much money anyway by investing the limited amount of capital we have, but if we can teach farmers in Myanmar the techniques that we use in Taiwan to grow rice and help lift them out of poverty, that would be enough to satisfy us.” And with this as their motivation, these Taiwanese farmers sketch out their Myanma dream.
