Myanmar's Harvest at Risk: The Fertiliser Crisis Threatening Food Security Across Southeast Asia

The fields should be coming alive. In normal years, late May marks the start of Myanmar's monsoon planting season — a period when millions of smallholder farmers across the Irrawaddy Delta and central dry zone begin turning soil and transplanting rice seedlings. But 2026 is not a normal year.

As the planting window opens, a crisis is unfolding that may determine whether large swathes of Myanmar's agricultural sector survive the year. Fertilisers that cost a fraction of their current price two years ago are now priced beyond the reach of most smallholders. Fuel for irrigation pumps and transport has become prohibitively expensive. And the farmers who feed not only Myanmar but significant portions of the regional rice market are warning, in plain terms, that they may not be able to continue.

"If we continue this way farmers could disappear from this country," one farmer told Middle East Eye, speaking from a village in the Irrawaddy Delta, where the bulk of Myanmar's rice is grown.

A Sector Under Pressure

The immediate trigger is economic. Since the military coup of February 2021, Myanmar's currency has depreciated sharply against the dollar. Fertilisers — most of which are imported, priced in foreign currency, and subject to supply chain disruptions caused by the civil conflict — have become dramatically more expensive in kyat terms. Fuel prices, themselves tied to import costs and logistics constraints, compound the problem: irrigation in many areas depends on diesel pumps, and transport costs to move inputs to farms and produce to markets have surged.

The result is a cost structure that is pricing farmers out of the inputs they need to maintain even modest yields. A bag of urea that cost roughly 20,000 kyat before the coup now trades at multiples of that figure, depending on location and supply availability. For a farmer working a few acres of rain-fed or semi-irrigated land, the arithmetic is brutal: the cost of fertiliser alone may exceed the expected return from the harvest.

The military government's handling of the economy has attracted widespread criticism. The kyat's decline reflects both the underlying instability — foreign investors have largely exited, and the junta controls less territory than it did in 2021 — and policy decisions that have prioritized security spending over agricultural subsidies. The result, according to multiple analysts tracking the country, is an agricultural sector operating under conditions approaching structural failure for a substantial proportion of its participants.

The war has further disrupted the supply chains that previously moved fertilisers from ports to rural areas. Fighting in parts of Sagaing Region and the southeast has damaged roads and discouraged truck drivers from operating certain routes. Checkpoints manned by both the junta and resistance forces add delays and costs. The logistics of getting inputs to farms — and produce to consumers — have become more complex and expensive with each passing year of conflict.

The Food Security Dimension

Myanmar is not simply a domestic food producer. It has historically been a significant exporter of rice, particularly to neighbours in the region and to markets in Africa and the Middle East. The country ranked among the world's top rice exporters before the coup, and the Irrawaddy Delta alone produced enough surplus to be a major contributor to global rice trade.

If that production capacity contracts substantially, the effects will not be confined to Myanmar's borders. The region depends on a functioning rice market in which Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand together account for a meaningful share of global exports. Disruption to one node in that network — especially a large one — transmits upward pressure on prices across the board.

The countries most exposed to rice price volatility are not wealthy. Bangladesh, the Philippines, and a range of sub-Saharan African nations import significant quantities of rice to feed urban populations and supplement domestic shortfalls. Higher prices on the international market translate into higher costs for governments and for poor households that spend a large share of income on staple foods. The connection between Myanmar's fields and dinner tables in Dhaka or Lagos is not abstract.

China, which shares a long border with Myanmar and has significant economic interests in its northern neighbour, is watching closely. Beijing has not formally recognised the military government but has maintained commercial relationships and diplomatic channels. Chinese state media has framed the situation primarily in terms of border stability and the opium cultivation problem, but the broader food security implications of a collapsed Myanmar agricultural sector are not lost on regional analysts.

What the Data Shows

Assessing the precise scale of agricultural disruption inside Myanmar is genuinely difficult. The military government controls some official statistics, but its credibility is contested, and its access to information from resistance-held areas is limited. Independent monitoring organisations operate under significant constraints.

What is clear from reporting by international wire services, humanitarian organisations, and regional media is that food insecurity has deepened substantially since 2021. The World Food Programme estimated in 2025 that a significant portion of Myanmar's population was experiencing acute food insecurity, though precise figures vary depending on methodology and access for assessment teams.

The fertiliser shortage is consistent with broader patterns visible across Myanmar's economy: the war has degraded infrastructure, disrupted trade, and driven a contraction in economic activity that is reflected in everything from manufacturing output to retail activity in major cities. Agriculture, which employs roughly a quarter of the workforce and generates a substantial share of GDP, has not been immune.

The structural picture is not uniform. Larger, better-capitalised farms and those with access to alternative inputs — including some organic approaches and improved seed varieties — have fared better than the typical smallholder. Some resistance-controlled areas have attempted to organise alternative supply chains, though these operate outside the formal economy and face their own logistics challenges. The distribution of agricultural distress is uneven, and the farmers most exposed are those least able to absorb additional shocks.

The Geopolitical Shadow

The international response to Myanmar's crisis has been shaped by the same political divisions that have defined the broader conflict. Western governments have imposed targeted sanctions on military officials and their business interests, but the impact on the junta's capacity to govern or fight has been limited. Humanitarian exemptions allow some aid to flow, but the operational environment for international organisations remains difficult.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has struggled to arrive at a coherent position. The regional bloc's principle of non-interference in member states' internal affairs has constrained more robust diplomatic engagement, though ASEAN's special envoy has continued efforts to facilitate dialogue. The practical result is a diplomatic logjam while the humanitarian situation deteriorates on the ground.

China's posture has drawn particular attention. Beijing has historically maintained relationships with Myanmar's military and, more recently, with some ethnic armed groups with which it shares border interests. Chinese state media has framed the situation largely in terms of stabilising the border and combating narcotics production, while the food security dimension has received less prominent treatment in official Chinese outlets. The extent to which China would move to secure food supplies from Myanmar — or to prevent a refugee outflow that might destabilise Yunnan Province — remains a question that regional analysts are watching closely.

The Season Ahead

The next three months will determine a great deal. June and July are the critical window for rice transplanting in the main production areas. If fertilisers are not applied at the right time, yields suffer, and there is limited ability to make up ground later in the season. A poor harvest in 2026 would compound the difficulties of 2025 and create a downward spiral that is difficult to reverse without significant external intervention.

The international community has limited leverage to reverse the underlying drivers of the crisis. The military government is unlikely to shift resources from military operations to agricultural subsidies. The resistance, operating from areas it controls, lacks the institutional capacity and international recognition to access major aid flows. A country that was self-sufficient in food production five years ago and is now flirting with mass farm abandonment is a stark measure of what prolonged civil conflict can do to a functioning economy.

The farmer in the Irrawaddy Delta who warned that Myanmar may lose its farming base was speaking from a specific place and a specific set of circumstances. But the logic of what he described — inputs too expensive, markets too disrupted, the season too pressing — is one that resonates across a country in which the war has progressively hollowed out civilian infrastructure. Whether the international system can respond with sufficient speed to prevent a food security crisis that would dwarf what has already occurred remains, at this moment, an open question.

This publication's approach to the Myanmar story has centred on structural economic factors and regional food security implications rather than the political dimensions of the coup itself. Wire coverage has been dominated by battlefield updates and diplomatic negotiations; the everyday mechanics of how an agricultural economy deteriorates under sustained conflict have received less attention. The two framings are interconnected, but the human stakes on the farm are distinct from those in the negotiating room.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/middleeastEye/18436