🇲🇲 The cattle breeds of Myanmar

Myanmar's cattle are working animals first: oxen and water buffalo pull ploughs across a farm economy built on rice. The country runs the biggest herds in southeast Asia, with most stock in the drier north. Beef eating stays low for religious reasons, and live-cattle exports, banned in 2012, were legalised and regulated in 2017.

• Myanmar keeps the biggest cattle herds in southeast Asia, as of 2024.
• Oxen and water buffalo serve as the country's draft animals.
• Most of the national herd is raised in the drier north.
• Live cattle exports, banned in 2012, were legalised and regulated in 2017.
• Beef is eaten little, for religious reasons and because cattle are useful farm workers.

Cattle in Myanmar

Cattle in Myanmar are farm animals before they are food. They share the fields with water buffalo, and both are prized above all as draft animals in a country where agriculture still occupies most working people. Herders in the drier north hold the bulk of the national herd, while buffalo and oxen do the heavy field work on the rice paddies. Myanmar herds more cattle than any other country in southeast Asia, yet beef is eaten sparingly, out of religious belief and because the animals are more useful at work than as meat. Goats, sheep, pigs and poultry complete the village stock, and a live-cattle export trade, once banned outright, now runs under government rules.

Regions and communities

Cattle country is the drier north, where most of the national herd is raised. In the wetter rice lands, water buffalo and oxen take on the heavy field work instead. Hill areas such as Chin State farm by shifting cultivation: woodland is burned, cropped for a few seasons, then left for the forest to return. Elsewhere the paddy fields wait on the monsoon for their water more than on the rivers. Farming stays small in scale and mixed, with animals kept alongside crops rather than on separate ranches.

Milk, butter and beef

Cattle here yield little food. Beef is eaten in small amounts, held back by religious belief and by the worth of a live animal on the farm. Milk is not a major cattle output either; where farmers milk animals, it is chiefly goats kept in pasture for that purpose. The trade that counts is in the animals themselves. Live cattle exports were outlawed in 2012, yet stock left the country illegally in volume all the same; from 2017 the trade was made legal and regulated, partly so the state could collect revenue from it. Fish, dried and salted, supplies much of the protein beef does not.

Today

As of 2024, Myanmar keeps the biggest cattle herds in southeast Asia. Politics has swung the export trade: the Major Commodity and Service Law of 2012 outlawed selling live cattle abroad, but with enforcement slack, smugglers moved animals out regardless. In 2017 the government under Aung San Suu Kyi lifted the prohibition and began overseeing exports, treating them as a way to earn revenue. Farming overall still provides about 60 percent of GDP and work for roughly 65 percent of the workforce.