A woman in the paddy field
Agriculture takes up a significant portion of the Myanmar economy, accounting for roughly one-third of GDP employing two-thirds of the workforce (International Trade Administration 2022). In agriculture, female labour plays an important role and contributes up to 50.5% of rural farm labour. Ms. Pa Pa Aung, who lives in Kan Kone Village, Khayan region and runs a family farm, is one of our customers at Khayan branch.
In 2010, Ms.Pa Pa Aung started working as a farmer in her inherited farm from her parents in order to live a fulfilling life like others. She primarily cultivates rice and mung beans on her 21 acres of land. She said she lacks confidence in cultivating rice but feels more comfortable in growing beans. Success each year depends on not only on timely receipt and planting of quality inputs, soil and vegetation conditions, and use of the appropriate fertilizers and pesticides, but also on things outside of their own control, such as rainfall and general weather conditions. If the paddy field is damaged by poor weather conditions, all the investment for the field is gone. Last year, her paddy field flooded due to the heavy rainfall and all the rice was damaged.
Ms. Pa Pa Aung is a strong woman. She did not give up during her hardship and took up a loan from ASGB immediately after she got to know of ASGB through our loan officers in November 2022. She said “I used ASGB’s agriculture loan for purchasing mung bean seeds and renting heavy machineries for cultivation. Since it was just in time for the bean planting season, I could invest in time and successfully made a lot of profits”. Ms.Pa Pa Aung also said if she did not borrow a loan from ASGB, she would have been in much larger debt, because she would have had to buy bean seeds (about 70,000MMK for 1 tin = 20kg) on credit and pay a high interest. It also costs about 30,000 MMK to rent agriculture machinery to cultivate 1-acre land. The seed season starts in October which will be harvested in the following February. Beans are seasonal crops – if it is planted later than January, a bean yield per acre will be lesser than it is planted earlier. In this season, Ms. Pa Pa Aung has harvested the beans from 9 acres among the total 21 acres and gathered 12 tins for sale.
The daily life of farmers during the planting and harvesting seasons is busy. Ms. Pa Pa Aung wakes up early morning. After she practices morning chanting (it is common in Myanmar for Buddhists to pay respect to the Buddha before a day starts), she goes to the paddy field and starts her job. Around 11am, she takes a break and has lunch. After avoiding the heat in the afternoon, she goes to the filed again around 2:30pm and comes back home around 5pm. Similar to beans, rice can be also cultivated twice a year – in summer and rainy season. Ms .Pa Pa Aung said she received a loan by promising with ASGB to pay it back. After 6 months, she successfully repaid the full loan amount after selling the beans to rice distributors and wholesalers in Khayan down town. There was no difficulty for her to make the repayment.
She also shared what she likes about ASGB. “There is no collateral required and ASGB provide loans to farmers with trust. I love to work with ASGB because I can get a large loan amount to invest in my farm business. Thank you– I hope that you continue to provide loans to farmers with trust.”
