The Agrarian Problem in Burma

Abstract

lHE i6 million people of prewar Burma enjoyed a higher standard of living than did their neighbors in India and China. The chief reasons for this advantage were the favorable soil and climate of Burma, together with the absence of overpopulation, factors which enabled Burma to export more than one-third of the rice entering world trade.' As the sudden cessation of Burman rice exports after the Japanese invasion of I942 was a main factor in causing the I943 Bengal famine in India, so Burma's present inability to export rice in sizeable quantities greatly aggravates the world food shortage. Agrarian distress in Burma today is due in the main to the fact that much of the country was fought over in I942 and in I944-45 and was subjected to constant bombing throughout the Pacific war. Loss of an export market and the Japanese army's insatiable demands for men and cattle caused millions of Burmans to give up farming. A subsidiary cause of the distress lies in certain deep-seated troubles which have existed for many years. The present paper attempts to state the chief agrarian problems, and to review some of the means already suggested for their solution. In I940-4I, of a total cultivated area of nearly 20 million acres,2 more than I2.5 million acres were sown to rice. Four-fifths of this paddy area was concentrated in the Irrawaddy Delta and the near-by areas of Lower Burma, where a monsoon rainfall of between 8o and 200 inches per year is usual and irrigation is unnecessary. The Dry Zone of Central Burma has ordinarily produced a little less rice than it has consumed, and it has depended chiefly on irrigation for its rice crop. Other important Dry Zone crops are sesamum, groundnuts, cotton, beans, millet and sugar cane. Northern Burma is mountainous and largely undeveloped. The