Recommended vs. Practice: Smallholder Fertilizer Decisions in Central Myanmar

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 ..