With the arrival of the monsoon and the onset of the open season, the opportune moment has arrived to adapt crop cultivation practices to the prevailing climatic conditions. Shifting towards cold-season crops on croplands becomes imperative to yield new crops this season.
Emphasizing the importance of agriculture and livestock farming to meet local demands, Myanmar aligns its efforts with the inherent nature of its people — a continuous and boundless supply of agricultural and livestock products. Consequently, there is an ongoing need to intensify efforts to boost the annual production of crops and livestock.
Currently, escalating individual oil consumption has led to the annual importation of thousands of tonnes of edible oil. Myanmar, according to recent statistics, imported over 800,000 tonnes of cooking oil. To curb foreign exchange expenditures, the nation must encourage local farmers to expand the sown acreage of oil crops while urging businesspersons to produce high-quality cooking oil.
The imperative now lies in striving to achieve targeted yields for paddy, pulses, beans, corn, and oil crops. The key to success lies in farmers adopting the right mix of quality crop strains, fertile soil, efficient water supply, and advanced agricultural techniques to realize high crop yields.
Authorities are actively overseeing the sale of cooking oil and fuel oil, ensuring compliance with reference prices and preventing prices from exceeding market suitability. The release of weekly reference prices for cooking oils aims to alleviate the financial burden on consumers and stabilize the cooking oil market.
To combat the rising prices of cooking oils, it is crucial to expand the sown acreage of oil crops across all available lands, leaving no acreage vacant or unused. This expansion not only boosts local growers’ incomes but also caters to consumer demand while reducing reliance on foreign imports of cooking oil, thereby saving foreign exchange expenditures. Additionally, oil crops, integral to the agriculture sector, contribute to an increase in per-acre yields, positively impacting the nation’s GDP.
Myanmar’s population also consumes oil crops such as groundnut and sesame in addition to cooking oil. Retaining these crops for domestic oil production instead of exporting them has the potential to elevate local oil sufficiency to an impressive 249.5 per cent annually. This shift could result in a significant reduction of approximately US$600 million per year in cooking oil imports, underscoring the need for all farmers to intensify the cultivation of oil crops to meet the growing demand for local oil consumption.
