A vast majority of rural people are farmers whose livelihood is agriculture. Agriculture plays a very important role in the country’s economy. In the past, Myanmar earned most of her foreign exchange by selling agricultural products. Rice alone fetched more foreign exchange than all the non-agricultural exports combined.

With poor transportation plus primitive methods of farming, the country’s rice per acre yield was low when compared to that of her neighbours.

Although the farmers have to work hard day in, day out, they could enjoy very few fruits of their labour. They have been down-trodden and exploited by capitalists for years countable by the thousand. This being the case, they had to live in abject poverty with little or no comfort let alone luxury. And their socio-economic status was as low as could be. Myanmar used to export three million tons of rice a year before World War II. Now she exports less than one million tons of rice due to a variety of reasons.
Realizing such general weaknesses, the government of successive eras had given top priority to the modernization and mechanization of agriculture the length and breadth of the nation. In this context, it had undertaken a series of activities which include disbursing interest- free agricultural loans or low-interest loans, selling chemical fertilizers, pesticides and farm implements to farmers at reasonable prices, launching agricultural banks and seed-banks to help the farmers, building dams and reservoirs in different regions, implementing river-water pumping stations in some areas where water is scarce, introducing high-yield strains of paddy and other crops, disseminating modern agricultural methods to farmers so that they can extensively engage in double and mixed cropping as well as summer paddy cultivation and seeking foreign markets for locally produced rice. Thanks to the endeavours of the government the living standard of farmers has improved remarkably.

Nowadays, economic, political and social transformation has been undertaken steadily in consistent with the Constitution which is in line with multiparty democratic practices. The door is always open for those who are willing to participate constructively in the political process in accordance with the Constitution. As politics and economy usually go hand in hand, necessary amendments to the relevant laws and regulations are being made. Changes have taken place in various sectors. Meanwhile, the mechanization of farming is being introduced steadily with the extensive use of high-yeild strains of paddy. More and more farm implements are being imported or manufactured locally so that the farmers can grow paddy all the more.

Being agro-based country, Myanmar is trying its best for the development of agricultural sector, especially boosting paddy output for domestic consumption and export. With this end in view, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation has taken steps for acquisition of necessary technology, methods, quality strains and cooperation wherever possible including from the international community and international organizations. It is also seeking cooperation from countries enjoying higher technology. As the method to grow Palethwe hybrid strains of paddy is the best for the time being, the ministry is mobilizing and educating farmers across the country to widely grow the hybrid strains. And the growing of Palethwe hybrid strains of paddy with GAP system is demonstrated region-wide, for hybrid paddy production technology is widely used in the world.

At such a time, the participation of private sectors in successful cultivation of paddy is welcomed. And with private sector participation, the country will soon become an agro-based modern and developed nation