Nowadays, .prices of cooking oil are on the rise in the domestic market day by day. But cooking oil is essential in the cooking process of Myanmar meals. Despite practising the thrift of using cooking oil, Myanmar people consume small and large volumes of cooking oil on a daily basis.
Currently, Myanmar cultivates more than eight million acres of edible oil crops per year, oil mills produce just 300,000 tonnes of edible oil per year. In fact, the country requires some 1.2 million tonnes of edible oil on a yearly basis. Hence, both the government and businesspersons import edible oil crops such as sunflower oil, vegetable oil, palm oil and others yearly.
In order to cut the import of edible oil, the government makes arrangements for local farmers to grow sunflowers for the production of sunflower oil. In so doing, Magway Region decided to grow more than 100,000 acres of monsoon sunflower and 300,000 acres of cold season sunflower at the special zone and mixed and double cropping areas, totalling more than 400,000 acres. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation arranges cultivation of 1.5 million acres of monsoon, cold season and hybrid sunflower plantations to enable the people to consume healthy oil at fair prices.
Although Myanmar produces millions of baskets of edible crops on a yearly basis, it still imports 768,000 tonnes of palm oil in the 2017-2018 financial year, 370,000 tonnes of palm oil in the mini-budget of 2018, 855,000 tonnes in 2018-2019 FY, 888,000 tonnes in 2019-2020 FY and more than 800,000 tonnes in 2020-21 FY.
The Myanmar Seed Committee approved Yezin hybrid-1, foreign hybrid species and Hsin Shwekyar-2 for hybrid sunflower strains for farmer’s choice cultivation in the country. Sunflower comprises vitamin E, folic acid, magnesium and other elements contributing to the health of consumers.
More than 2.8 million acres of croplands are placed under groundnut plants, 3.8 million acres of lands under sesame and some 600,000 acres under sunflower, totalling over 7.6 million acres. At this juncture, an acre of groundnut can yield 186 kilos of oil, sesame 91 kilos of sesame and 288 kilos of sunflowers.
That is why all the people need to change consumption of cooking oil from hybrid sunflower while farmers should choose hybrid sunflower strains for cultivation so as to cut import volume of cooking oil as well as foreign exchange.
That is why all the people need to change consumption of cooking oil from hybrid sunflower while farmers should choose hybrid sunflower strains for cultivation so as to cut import volume of cooking oil as well as foreign exchange.
