Environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural production systems are crucial to conserve natural resources and the environment as well as to protect human health. In recent years, Myanmar, one of the agricultural-resource-rich developing countries, is confronting land degradation, environmental pollution, and food safety issues due to intensive agricultural methods that use high dosages of agro-chemical inputs. Myanmar environmental farming systems and the market for environmentally certified products are still under developed. Determining consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for environmentally certified products are vitally important to develop safe food markets. In this study, the choice experiment method was applied to examine consumer preference and the potential demand for environmentally friendly tomatoes. Using a sructured questionnaire in face to face interviews, the study collected information from 332 consumers in 8 supermarkets, and 4 open markets in Yangon city. Our results informed that most of the respondents in both markets have a positive WTP for an increase in each attribute. The supermarket respondents paid attentions to food safety labels, and it had the highest MWTP 2067.170 MMK (1.53 USD) relative to the other attributes. Our results suggest that policymakers and producers must enhance consumers’ knowledge of what is an eco-product and how to differentiate it in the market place and emphasize the improvement of food safety certification programs.

In recent years most developing countries, including Myanmar, have been seriously affected by the negative effect of climate variability—such as erratic rainfall, increased temperatures, longer dry spells, flooding and saltwater intrusion—during the crop growing season. Furthermore, most farmers lack knowledge of climate variability and how to cope with the negative effect of climate change. This study aimed to evaluate the profitability and profit efficiency of rice farmers in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar, during 2019 monsoon growing season, taking into consideration the effect of weather shock and farmers’ agricultural adaptation practices to climate variability. The Cobb-Douglas functional form was applied, with maximum likelihood techniques, to estimate rice growing productivity and the influencing factors of profit inefficiency among individual rice farmers. The average profit efficiency level of the yield loss group was approximately 0.39, while that of the no yield loss group was 0.66, indicating a relatively large gap between the two groups (27% wider distribution). Observation of the climate adaptation performances of rice farmers indicated that rice production incorporating climate adaptation practices (CAP) led to a significantly better average profit efficiency score (66%) than rice production omitting CAP. This study clearly revealed that the effect of weather variability on individual rice farmers leads to large variations in net profit and profit efficiency for monsoon rice production in the study area. Climate-smart agricultural practices should be developed through agricultural extension services, and using farmer-to-farmer extension services, to share information and technologies among smallholder rice farmers.

Rice is the dominant crop in Myanmar and central to the agricultural economy. To increase rice productivity, farmers’ production performance is vital. This requires adjusting the availability of physical production inputs in response to environmental conditions. Very few studies have focused on the effects of relevant environmental conditions in Myanmar, including the impact of weather shocks during the rice production. This study aimed to the improve rice production based on the present performance of rice farmers, while controlling the impact of adverse environmental conditions. Information on rice production was extracted randomly from in-depth interviews with rice farmers in the Ayeyarwady Delta region. The Cobb-Douglas stochastic production frontier function was applied to examine the effects of the underestimated environmental factors. Erratic rainfall and excessive temperature during early growth stage have a significant negative impact on monsoon rice productivity. During the 2018-2019 monsoon cropping season, different levels of yield loss due to weather shock negatively affected rice farmers’ production efficiency. Controlling the environmental conditions improved technical efficiency from 88% to 93%. Based on these findings, policy makers and stakeholders should invest in climate services development, thus enhancing farmers’ understanding of weather variability and upscaling the use of local climate adaptation strategies in accordance with the Myanmar Climate Smart Agriculture Strategy.