As everyone knows, Myanmar still remains mainly reliant on agriculture, which constitutes the principal pillar and foundation for Myanmar's future all-round development. Now the population of the country stands at 53 million, and about 70 per cent of the people live in the rural areas, engaged mainly in the agriculture, fisheries, and forestry sectors. For food security and economic development, the Myanmar Government gives priorities to the performance and production of these important sectors.

To raise the human development index, aiming to improve the education, health and economic well-being of 36 million rural people is of vital importance.

In agriculture, especially in the crop sector, more than sixty kinds of crops can be grown throughout the country. These can be classified into seven groups: namely, cereals, oilseeds, food legumes, industrial crops, kitchen crops, plantation, and horticultural crops. The total crop sown area in Myanmar covers 41.32 million acres (16.72 million ha.).

Every effort is made to encourage rice production so as to meet the demand of both increasing local consumption and foreign exports. Normally rice has been grown as one crop a year, in the monsoon season, but with the introduction of the summer paddy program in 1992–93, rice is being sown throughout the year. So in 2003–04, the total sown area of summer paddy reached 2.736 million acres (1.107 million ha.). For several reasons, the average yield of rice, at 3.42 tonnes per hectare, is still low compared with yields achieved by neighbouring countries. So it is evident that there is a strong need for Myanmar's agriculture to make further improvement, in order to catch up as much as possible with the high yields pertaining among some Southeast Asian nations. The most significant shortcomings in agriculture at present include: the non-optimum yields of some major crops; the inadequacy of inputs such as chemical fertilizers and other agro-chemicals; lack of good quality seeds; and inadequacy of post-harvest technology and farm mechanization services.