Recommended vs. Practice: Smallholder Fertilizer Decisions in Central Myanmar

So Pyay Thar, Robert J. Farquharson, Thiagarajah Ramilan, Sam Coggins and Deli Chen
Additional contact information
So Pyay Thar: School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
Robert J. Farquharson: School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
Thiagarajah Ramilan: School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
Sam Coggins: College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
Deli Chen: School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Agriculture in Myanmar has substantial development potential given the abundance of land, water, and labor resources in the country. Despite this, agricultural productivity in Myanmar is low and farm incomes are amongst the lowest in Asia. The underperformance of crops and low yield is widely reported to be due to low fertilizer use by smallholders. This study investigated the perceptions of smallholders about fertilizer use for cereal crops by considering their motives and decision making. We reported results of a 600 smallholders’ survey and tested whether the reportedly low fertilizer use by smallholders is generally true for central Myanmar. We compared the fertilizer application timing against recommended “good management practices”. Among the surveyed rice farmers, the average fertilizer applied was much higher than previously reported national average fertilizer rates while the majority of the surveyed maize farmers were found to be applying less than the national recommended rates. With respect to timing, nearly half of the surveyed smallholders were not applying nitrogen at the estimated panicle initiation stage, which is often crucial to increase yield, and the majority (82%) of smallholders were applying phosphorus throughout the growth stages, when earlier applications are desirable. Smallholders may be able to reduce the cost of labor by reducing the number of P applications and avoiding late applications.

Keywords: smallholder; fertilizer; decision making; Myanmar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/1/65/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/1/65/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:1:p:65-:d:480512

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().