Monitoring the impact of COVID-19 in Myanmar: Yangon peri-urban poultry farmers - Late June 2020 survey round

Fang, Peixun; Belton, Ben; Ei Win, Hnin; and Zhang, Xiaobo. 2020. Monitoring the impact of COVID-19 in Myanmar: Yangon peri-urban poultry farmers - Late June 2020 survey round. Myanmar SSP Policy Note 13. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.133810.

With increasing demand for chicken, the reopening rate of broiler farms in June has overtaken closures. Their challenges have switched from the demand side to the supply side due to a shortage of day-old-chicks. However, more layer farms closed in June than previously. The share of layer farms that are operational decreased from 90 to 85 percent with further decreases expected. Cash flow remains the main driver of poultry farms closures. Even though most operational farms did not have problems selling their products due to increasing demand, cash flow remains a problem for them. In the second half of June, cash flow slightly improved for boiler farms, while it slightly worsened for layer farms. The price of broilers peaked at 5,350 MMK/viss in early June due to a supply shortage. Since then, the price has fallen to around 4,000 MMK/viss with recent increases in supply. Supply shortages of day-old broiler chicks was the main problem that prevented broiler farms from fully recovering their operational capacity. Some broiler farms expect their total revenue to increase, while others expect a decrease. In the past two weeks, the number of hired regular workers in operational poultry farms has further decreased by approximately one worker per farm. Since March, total job losses among the 275 surveyed farms was 900 – 39 percent of the total labor on those farms.