"Except for a limited few natural resource-rich countries, no country has made a transition to high income status without a successful process of agricultural transformation. This transformation is a multi-stage process of structural change involving fundamental shifts in resource utilization, farm and value chain organization, product composition, and the scale and types of contributions to a country’s macroeconomy. For most countries, dynamic changes in agriculture predate and help to foster broader patterns of economic structural transformation. Conversely, a stagnant and underproductive agriculture can halt overall economic development in its tracks and limit a country’s capacity to address inequalities between rural and urban areas, thereby incubating instability. These lessons from international experience strongly apply to Myanmar. Agriculture still represents a large share of Myanmar’s GDP and labor force. Taking into account forward and backward linkages, Myanmar’s agri-food sector still accounts for nearly 42 of GDP and 58 percent of employment. Agriculture’s effectiveness in generating raw materials and a diversified mix of quality and safe food products will continue to play a vital role in the development of the country’s manufacturing and services sectors. And, the sector’s profitability will strongly impact the scope for domestic financial resource mobilization as well as the ultimate size of the domestic consumer class. A vibrant agriculture can support the development of a healthy urban economy, while a struggling agriculture will simply absorb resources and retard the country’s overall competitiveness. Poverty in Myanmar is primarily a rural and agriculture-related phenomenon and must be largely addressed in these contexts. Of the 15.8 million people classified as poor in 2015, 87 percent lived in rural areas. Rural out-migration, both to cities and other countries, can play some role in reducing poverty, but not for the bulk of Myanmar’s poor households. Much of the solution to poverty in Myanmar will have to be found in rural areas, both through agriculture and non-agricultural activities. Nearly half of the country’s poverty reduction between 2005 and 2015 is attributable directly to progress..."