Shattered Ground
Quakes, rice, forests and food systems
This has been a very surreal week, with losses both personal and collective.
As you probably know by now, Myanmar, where I was born and raised, was hit by an earthquake that was both powerful and shallow - a deadly combination. This happened on a Friday just as I was embarking on a work trip. Frantic messages and doom scrolling have been the order of the week.
Then on Saturday, Gwen Robinson, an old friend whose love for Myanmar is well-known and who has done much to support Burmese journalists, passed away. She was also a big champion of my work and an outspoken supporter of The Kite Tales.
I’m very grateful for the chance to see her briefly during my whistle stop tour of Thailand last month, hold her hand, and tell her we love her. If you didn’t get a chance to know her, this obituary by the FT, where she worked for nearly two decades, gives a glimpse of the extraordinary life and influence she had.
After the Quake
The devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar on Friday could not come at a worse time for the Southeast Asian nation of some 54 million people.
But let’s backtrack a little bit. Nearly two months ago, I wrote about how it is in a “profound polycrisis” and how the freeze in U.S. aid is compounding long-term neglect by the international community.
I cited reports from various organisations, including the U.N. and ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), that showed the dire state of the country.
Half the population living below the poverty line and a further one third just barely above it
Inflation is at 25.4% while the currency has plunged in value
Less than half of the population has electricity access, compared to 72.5% in 2021
The number of airstrikes targeting civilians more than tripled in 2024 compared to 2023
Case of infectious diseases such as malaria and TB have soared
Widespread armed clashes have fractured community ties, especially in the Buddhist heartland of central Myanmar
Less than 40% of the UN’s assistance plan for Myanmar in 2024 was funded, of which nearly a third came from the U.S. (now mostly gone), and the plan for 2025 is less than 5% funded
Then the USAID cuts hit, crippling so many services, including lifesaving healthcare. Exiled media outlets, usually the only reliable source of news for people inside and outside the country, also took a hit, and a number of them have had to cut staff numbers.
It is in this moment that the 7.7 magnitude quake occurred at a depth of 10 km.
Its epicentre - 16 km north-north-west of Sagaing city, and 19 km north-west of Mandalay city, Myanmar’s second largest city - includes areas that have seen some of the fiercest fighting between the junta and pro-democracy forces, areas not under the junta’s control, and areas that have been deliberately targeted by the junta with air raids and arson.
These areas have also been under regular communication blackouts dating back to the coup, making it extremely challenging to ascertain how bad the damage has been and for people in the area to request help.
In case you would like to support the relief efforts in Myanmar, especially to areas outside of the military regime’s control, I’m sharing a list of organisations I personally know and trust and their appeal pages.
In two weeks’ time, Myanmar will usher in a new year as per its traditional calendar. I’m hoping what looks like continued misfortune will also end with the old year.
Better Burma: the GoFundMe link is here.
Medical Action Myanmar: the GoFundMe link is here.
Sonne Social: the donation page for the quake is here.
Mutual Aid Myanmar: the donation page for the quake is here.
Community Partners International: donation link is on the homepage.
Myanmar Earthquake Relief: the donation page for the quake is here.
Thin in Fodder
I’m deeply honoured to have been featured on this week’s issue of FODDER, a newsletter by the good folks at TABLE, who curates, organises, and writes about some of the most interesting topics under the food systems umbrella. One of its offerings is a podcast called Fuel to Fork, whose host, Matthew Kessler, I’ve previously featured on Thin Ink.
A few days before the quake hit, Jack Thompson, editor of FODDER, and I had a long and wide-ranging conversation about Southeast Asia’s food systems, including on Myanmar.
The conversation was part of a series they’re doing on food system debates around the world. They’ve already published fascinating conversations with experts in Latin America and West Africa, and I hear their next stop will be the U.S., exploring the debates and contentious conversations inside U.S. farming communities.
Do sign up for the fortnightly newsletter if you’re interested in keeping yourself up-to-date with the latest papers, reports, and debates on this topic.
With TABLE’s kind permission, I’m reproducing the Q&A in full below.
TABLE: Thanks for joining us Thin. Can you tell us a bit about growing up in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma)?
Thin Lei Win: So, you know, in many ways I've always been obsessed with food ever since I was born and raised in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. I grew up in a household that equates food and eating with community, love and sharing.
Myanmar is, and especially when I was born, was an agrarian country. So farming was a very important part of society. We are a nation obsessed with rice. For example, we would greet each other by asking, “Hta-min-saar-pee-bee-lar”, which translates as have you had rice?
TABLE: What led you to focus on food as a journalist?
TLW: I've always been interested in that topic but it wasn't actually really until 10 years ago when I was back home in Myanmar to set up an investigative news agency that I had this what you would call a light bulb moment.
I was back home and I was interviewing the then country director of the UN’s World Food Program in Myanmar. And I was asking him questions around why food insecurity and malnutrition were still so high despite almost always being a food surplus country, even during decades of military dictatorship.
It was due to rice. Our diets weren’t diverse enough. Malnutrition and food insecurity are high in a lot of minority ethnic areas, not because of a problem with availability, but because of access or affordability. That's when I really started to see food and climate issues not in isolation or as a response to an emergency but as a political economy problem. Who holds the power? Who makes those policies? Who has economic interests around how food is produced, distributed and consumed not just in Myanmar but around the world.
TABLE: What are the food interconnections between South East Asia and the global economy?
TLW: Take just two countries; Indonesia and Malaysia. I suspect their palm oil exports reach almost every continent on earth. We're talking about an extremely interconnected world.
Anybody that's really interested in cutting edge food technology, Southeast Asia is a really interesting place. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world and they are very interested in making their food systems self-sufficient in part because it's a very small country and it is very much dependent on imports to feed its population. So they've been very forward looking when it comes to investing in the latest food technology. They're one of the few countries I think in the world with the money and the political will to do it. Singapore and the United States are the only two countries that have set up the regulatory process for cell-based meat.
Southeast Asia is 11 countries and a region of 700 million people. I know that the political winds are blowing in very different directions, but I truly think you cannot just ignore what's happening in one corner of the world and think you'd be sort of immune from what's happening there.
TABLE: Even if you just take palm oil and deforestation. If you care about climate change, biodiversity and UPFS, Southeast Asia is hugely important.
TLW: So true. We know about the Amazon basin. We know about the Congo basin. But Southeast Asia has the third largest intact rainforest (but being lost at the fastest rate) yet people don’t think about Southeast Asia in the same way.
TABLE: Do you get the sense that it's not included in global food system debates as perhaps it should be?
TLW: I think you hit the nail on the head. I can only speculate as to why.
If you look at the countries and the political system of countries in Southeast Asia, they're all very closed. A lot have issues around their democratic governance. I don't want to use these massive brushstrokes around major regions but Southeast Asia tends to get forgotten because in some ways it's not conflict ridden in the same way, apart from Myanmar where I’m from. It's not affected by the same geopolitical forces as in Europe, the Americas and I guess Africa.
TABLE: You described land as a unifying challenge in the region, can you expand on this?
TLW: One similarity across almost all Southeast Asian countries is widespread poverty among farmers. And part of the reason is access to land. There's so much competition for land whether you're an agrarian country or you're a developed country. One of the reasons why Singapore is so laser focused on food tech is because it doesn't have the land it needs to grow its own food. And then in other countries you have conflict around land grabs and land use, ranging from farmland expansion, particularly for cash crops like palm oil and rubber. That then encroaches on land for food. Then you have a lot of big agri businesses in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar where they are very closely aligned with the political elite.
I would say it has become worse, particularly with the threat of climate change and the concern around global supply chains. People are trying to get access to as much land as possible.
This is a massive barrier to transforming food systems in these countries, particularly if you've got a small number of agribusinesses or owners that have access to a vast majority of the land and will be interested in focusing on cash crops, monoculture, and industrial scale agriculture.
Some economists think it's much more efficient for a small number of owners to have vast quantities of land. But it's also a recipe for communal conflict. It's a recipe for a continued focus on productivity versus nutrition versus environmental protection versus a more equitable access to land and livelihood and income.
TABLE: Finally, what are you optimistic about in Southeast Asia? What gives you hope?
TLW: Not the governments of Southeast Asia, but we have a new generation of journalists, activists, farmers and civil society organisations that I have met over the past few years. They are deeply engaged in these issues in a way that I have not seen in the past and despite all the challenges.
In Myanmar, there's currently a civil war going on because of a military coup in 2021. It's in a bad way in terms of nutrition and hunger. And yet, people that I have spoken to, the younger generation of people who grew up in Myanmar, deeply care about fairness and equality. They deeply care about the environment, they deeply care about biodiversity, and want to build a better country.
And I see the similarity at least in the younger generation of Thai, Indonesian and Filipino journalists and activists that I have met. So it's a bit of a cliché, but I'm hopeful that the new generation has a better grasp on things.
Thin’s Pickings
Q&A: Support Vital for Myanmar’s Quake Victims, Despite Military Obstacles - The International Crisis Group
Typically clear-eyed answers from ICG’s Myanmar expert Richard Horsey. Full disclosure: Richard’s a good friend but it’s the content that makes this a worthwhile read.
Bans on Soda and Candy in SNAP Are Back on the Table, and They’re Still Controversial - Civil Eats
Thoughtful piece from Lisa Held about attempts to restrict the purchase of soda and other unhealthy foods within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a U.S. government program that provides low-income households with financial assistance to buy food.
It was published last month, but even more relevant now that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced the Trump administration will allow states to do some of this.
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