Farmers feeding summer paddy into a thrashing machine. Pic: Minh Zaw

STRETCHING out seemingly forever on each side of main road linking Mandalay and Yankin Mountain to the east of Myanmar’s second-largest city, are carpets of golden rice paddy.

The place is a photographer’s wonderland because the lighting in the setting afternoon sun is superb and the elevated position above the unfolding fields provides a terrific platform. Unsurprisingly shots taken there often figure in photographic competitions.

However, rainy season is not the best time to try because the sky is always cloudy and rain, rare though it is, can fall at any time. For most of us that would be an annoyance at worst but for a rice farmer the unpredicted rains can spell disaster and driving around I saw many farmers hurrying to harvest and store their crops.

Farmer Ko Than Lwin atop a heap of paddy outside Mandalay. Pic: Minh Zaw

For someone who’s used to seeing the rice harvested in October through to December it’s strange to see this happening now in July.

Pulling into a small paddy shed by the roadside, I see a man sitting on the drying green pile.

I ask him his name and then a couple of questions about working the fields.
“Farming is tough work. It is very tiring,” he says.

The paddy on which Ko Than Lwin sits is the fruition of a 1992-93 government program to boost rice production and the incomes of farmers.

Ko Than Lwin is just one of the farmers who cultivates about 4 million acres of paddy under the Summer Paddy Program.

Growing paddy in summer is taugh and strenuous work because it hardly rains during this season and paddy fields need plenty of water.

Instead, farmers must use pumps to suck water into the irrigation canals and then out onto the fields. And the pumps don’t run on air – they need gasoline or diesel.

Fertiliser, too, is not free but to get good yields, it’s needed. All of this pushes the cost of golden paddy well above normal.

Despite six years of hard toil in the field, Ko Than Lwin says he’s struggling to see a reason for his extra work.

“My expenditures and revenues are always pretty similar. I’m not earning big profits for this crop,” he says.

Six years ago, he hired 5 acres of field from the owner, with the ‘lease’ set at 25 baskets per acre. Every year he’s harvested about 300 baskets, meaning that he only keeps 175.

He keeps working but admits that he’s not really making a profit, just treading water. Other farmers though, who own naturally rich fertile lands alongside the river, have benefited from summer paddy because they don’t have to spend so much money on fertiliser.

This year’s summer paddy price is about K2900 to K3500 a basket, more or less the same as last year but the cost of fertiliser has gone up by about 20 percent, to K23,000 a basket. “We have to pay K1200 a day to our workers,” he says, adding that there are about 50 in the field. His wife chips in with: “And we also have to buy paddy seeds and oil for the plough.”

Paddy seeds are priced depending on their quality: High-yield seed is K9000 a basket and low-yield is K5000. “We always use the best quality for summer paddy,” Ko Than Lwin’s wife says.

In his native Ponar Gone village in Patheingyi township in Mandalay Divison, Ko Than Lwin says some of the other farmers have sold their land and bought thrashing machines to hire out during the harvest seasons. He says he’s considering doing the same thing.

“I’d like to buy a thrashing machine but the problem is that it’s a large investment. It’s money I don’t have right now,” he laments.

Nearby a thrashing machine is very noisily going about its task and the owner Ko Myo Thu confirms Ko Than Lwin’s fears about the investment required to buy it.

He says it cost about K4 million to buy but it’s proven a good purchase because all the farmers in the area want to use it.

“Now all of the cows are resting in their sheds in their village,” he says with a knowing grin.

All the cows, except his own, who get the job of transporting the thrasher from job to job. “I don’t want to use a truck or car because it gets very muddy in some places and the bullock cart is better suited for getting the job done,” he says.

Ko Myo Thu has owned the thrasher for five years and says that for those who can afford them, buying a thrasher is a sound financial decision but not as easy as it seems.

“Farmers are aware that using thrashers is much quicker than the traditional methods but the cost to rent them is high because they cost a lot to buy, as are the costs to repair them when they break,” he says.

He adds that about 20 farmers from his village have bought thrashers because they pay themselves off within two years.

But there’s a catch – after two years the machine is thrashed and farmers don’t want to use them anymore because they use too much oil and diesel and take too long.

“Much of our profit goes in costs to repair the machines. But it’s better than farm work because it is not tiring and we’re not worried about the annual paddy price either.

“If the price of oil or diesel rises, we’ll just raise our charges. It’s easy.”