On 3-4 May 2016, CSAM successfully organized the Workshop on Business Management of Custom Hiring of Agricultural Machinery in the Dry Zone of Myanmar in Mandalay, Myanmar, in collaboration with the Network Activity Groups (NAG) and with the support of Department of Rural Development of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation of Myanmar (DRD-MALI).

This workshop is one of the capacity building activities under the project titled ‘An Integrated Rural Economic and Social Development Programme for Livelihoods Improvement in the Dry Zone of Myanmar’, funded through the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), led by the Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Sustainable Agriculture (CAPSA-ESCAP) in partnership with the Asian and Pacific Center for Transfer of Technologies (APCTT), the Center for Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization (CSAM) and the Network Activities Groups (NAG). The Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation of Myanmar (DRD-MALI) has been designated as the focal government agency to collaborate in the project implementation.

The workshop had attracted the attendance of 31 national participants from line Ministries, regional government offices, NGOs and civil society organizations, farmers’ associations, private sectors and machinery suppliers. Mr. Myo Naing Aung, Director of DRD-MALI Mandalay Region addressed the opening remarks.

Under the unified focus of ‘Climate Resilient Agriculture’, the workshop shared case study drafts on policies/institutions/processes (PIPs) and stakeholder mapping of custom hiring of agricultural machinery in the region, provided theories and concepts on business management of custom hiring services and invited custom hiring business operators from China, India and the Philippines to share their business models and real-life experience. Participants of different background actively exchanged their opinions on certain issues and raised practical questions such as the choice of agricultural machines, water management, soil management and farming methods and so on.

A field trip to two agricultural machinery companies in Mandalay, namely Modern Farm Co., Ltd and Good Brothers Co., Ltd, including the manufacture of the latter was organized in the morning of May 4th.