Constraints to commercialisation of smallholder agriculture in Tanintharyi division, Myanmar

Myanmar is a country in rapid economic and political transition, with opportunities emerging for its smallholders to benefit from current economic growth. However many smallholders are trapped in semi-subsistence agriculture, disconnected from markets. Commercialisation can increase farm incomes, and - through the multiplier effect - lead to wider pro-poor growth in the rural economy. However, there are many constraints to commercialisation that prevent this process from occurring. While literature on constraints confronting smallholders abounds internationally, there is a paucity of literature on the challenges confronting smallholders in Myanmar. This study investigates constraints to commercial farming in the townships (districts) of Myeik and Palaw in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Division. A representative two-stage sample of 259 rural households was drawn from these townships, and data relating to livelihoods and agricultural enterprises were gathered using a structured questionnaire. The most important determinants of commercialisation identified using Heckman regression were the household’s land endowment, liquidity, land quality, and productive assets. Access to affordable financial services could boost household liquidity and investment in farm inputs, assets and improvements to land, so alleviating the most important constraints to commercial farming

Rural livelihoods and constraints to commercial farming in Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar

Myanmar is a country in rapid economic and political transition, with opportunities emerging for its smallholders to benefit from current economic growth. However many smallholders are trapped in semi-subsistence agriculture, disconnected from markets. Commercialisation can increase farm incomes, and - through the multiplier effect - lead to wider pro-poor growth in the rural economy. However, there are many constraints to commercialisation that prevent this process from occurring. While literature on constraints confronting smallholders abounds internationally there is a paucity of literature on the challenges confronting smallholders in Myanmar. This study investigates constraints to commercial farming in the townships (districts) of Myeik and Palaw in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. A representative two-stage sample of 259 rural households was drawn from these townships, and data relating to livelihoods, food security and agricultural enterprises were gathered using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics presented in this paper provide useful insights into this poorly understood region. The most important determinants of commercialisation identified using Heckman regression were the household’s land endowment, liquidity, land quality, and productive assets. Access to affordable financial services could boost household liquidity and investment in farm inputs, assets and improvements to land, so alleviating the most important constraints to commercial farming

Rural livelihoods and constraints to commercial farming in Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar

Myanmar is a country in rapid economic and political transition, with opportunities emerging for its smallholders to benefit from current economic growth. However, many smallholders are trapped in semi-subsistence agriculture, disconnected from agricultural markets. Commercialisation of smallholder agriculture provides a pathway to improved livelihoods. However, there are many constraints to commercialisation that prevent this process from occurring. This study investigates constraints to commercial farming in two townships (districts) of the Tanintharyi Region. A representative two-stage sample of 259 households was drawn from the townships of Myeik and Palaw. A structured questionnaire gathered information from rural households on household livelihoods, food security and agricultural enterprises. Descriptive statistics presented in this paper provide valuable insights into this poorly understood area. Multivariate techniques are used to identify and rank the constraints to commercial farming. Listed in order of their relative importance, significant constraints included the household’s land endowment, its liquidity, land quality, productive assets, ethnicity, tenure security, and labour endowment. The paper concludes with evidence-based recommendations of relevance to development practitioners, donors and policy-makers, foremost amongst which is the need for affordable credit to alleviate constraints to commercial farming

The Chagossians’ struggle and the last bastions of imperial constitutionalism

The scale of the injustice inflicted upon the Chagossians by the United Kingdom is self-evident, but their legal route to redress has proven opaque and fraught with difficulty, as illustrated by the House of Lords’ majority decision in R (Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No 2) [2008] UKHL 61; [2009] 1 AC 453. This disconnect is, nonetheless, inherent in the UK’s constitutional order. Constitutions outline the operation of governance orders, with constitutionalism injecting substantive principles into this picture, developing the relationship between the holders of power and those subject to its exercise. But not all constitutionalising projects are devoted to the same ends. The legal saga of the Chagossians throws into sharp relief the disparity between the imperial constitutionalism which was constructed to organise the governance of the United Kingdom’s colonial possessions in the mid-nineteenth century and the principles which supposedly underpin its liberal democracy in the twenty-first. The denial of substantive protections for a colonised community against unchecked and oppressive exercises of executive power sits uneasily with the prevailing understandings of the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements, even though the constitutional architecture of the British Empire was designed to achieve this very end. Drawing upon archival material which highlights how differently the Chagossians were treated from ‘settler’ communities such as the Falklanders, our paper reassesses the Chagossians’ legal struggle in light of the hurdles that this bifurcated constitutional order places in their path, and the significant impacts of their efforts to navigate these barriers to justice upon this constitutional structure