Kachin's Contested Landscapes Farming, Mining and the Double Bind of Survival

Kachin State is famous for its rich mineral wealth, which has long been central to its political struggles for ethno-territorial and cultural rights. The 1994 ceasefire agreement, however, between the KIO and the military regime, then known as the State Law and Restoration Council (SLORC), unleashed significant and rapid changes. In a dramatic act of sovereignty-assertion via investment prospecting, the central military government declared over 5.2 million acres in Kachin State as vacant, virgin and fallow lands available for investment.3 This situation – where the central state sets itself up to grant land concessions in ceasefire zones as part of a post-war context to govern land and population by creating a regulated, legible and militarized territory – has been termed “ceasefire capitalism”. Based on a revival of the Wasteland Instruction, a legacy of British colonialism, the move to declare Kachin State open for business legalized state expropriation and reallocation of land classified as “wasteland”, including land without titles. The initial grant period was set for 30 years, with the possibility of renewal for 10 years at a time, up to a total of 50 years, paving the way for large-scale agricultural plantations, logging and mining projects.

A boom in the jade mining sector thus followed the ceasefire agreement between the KIO and the Myanmar military after over three decades of conflict and armed struggle. Prior to this agreement, the KIO held complete control over jade mining activities in Kachin State, operating on a smaller scale with less advanced technology and capital investment than seen today. During this period, the KIO functioned as a de facto state, collecting taxes on jade mining and sales to fund its army and administrative operations within its controlled territory. It also engaged in bartering jade for arms and equipment at the borders with China and Thailand.4

Little thought, however, was given to the potential consequences at that time. But the KIO ceasefire agreement very quickly altered the landscape of jade mining in Kachin State, which is home to the world’s most prized deposits. From 1994, jade mining activities needed formal licenses issued by the military regime of the SLORC, and these were then used as a political currency to secure alliances with ethnic armed groups from other states and regions. Since this time, ethnic armed organisations and people's militias from different parts of the country have come to play a significant role in the jade mining areas. In 2015, 624 jade mining blocks were allocated to 39 ceasefire groups and people's militias, operating under 64 different company names.

The ensuing land rush in Kachin State during these years was further fuelled by a global land rush centred around crisis narratives of fuel, food, climate change, finance and global governance, and especially a global hype around “flex crops” such as jatropha, rubber and corn.5 The most notable example occurred in 2006 when a 200,000-acre land concession was granted to the Yuzana Company for the production of biofuel crops (tapioca and cassava), supposedly to address the food and fuel crises and promote “national self-sufficiency.” Another example was the 2005 order by the military regime for jatropha cultivation across all the country’s states and regions, with a Kachin State quota of nearly 500,000 acres in a national total of 7.9 million acres, for long-term fuel sufficiency.

Such a land rush, though, does not end with progress or social and economic benefit for local peoples. Rather, driven by speculation, a land rush more often ends in unrealised projections and failed land deals. This was very much the case in Myanmar with the rubber and jatropha boom-bust cycles of the early 2000s. Land deals were often just a cover for intensive logging, a lucrative business. Indeed three-quarters of the country’s agricultural land concessions could said to be abandoned by the companies once the trees had been removed. Equally damaging, even after a land deal “fails” in this sense, the lands does not necessarily revert back to the original inhabitants. Instead, the affected communities are left landless and with many additional and unsettling consequences that they have to live with.6

2011 ushered in a new phase in the Myanmar military's political roadmap based on the 2008 constitution. The Tatmadaw retained overall political-economic control, while permitting limited elections and changes in administration. A new quasi-civilian government led by former generals took office in 2011, followed by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) apparently taking the reins in 2016.

For most rural working households, however, there was not much difference between the two administrations. Both proceeded to implement neoliberal economic reforms supported by the World Bank, International Financial Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Japan International Corporation Agencies. These variously viewed the country as "the final frontier of Southeast Asia", "Asia's missing link” and "a vast greenfield opportunity" with untapped natural resources and a consumer market of nearly 60 million people.

With this regime shift, a new land rush followed. But this time, a new round of dispossession of rural working people was normalized and masked by official government rhetoric of “economic” and “political” reforms. The KIO ceasefire, in fact, broke down in June 2011 after the Tatmadaw resumed military operations. But by early 2018 nearly 900,000 acres of concessions had been awarded in Kachin State to big agribusinesses.7 Additionally, over 1.6 million acres were designated as protected forest areas.8

Meanwhile, the land rush in Kachin State gave rise to a mining rush involving the Tatmadaw, the KIO, local militias and foreign and local capital. In the past two decades the region is estimated to be producing 90% of the world's jade, generating annual revenue as high as US$30.9 billion in 2014. This is equivalent to 47% of Myanmar's total GDP in 2019 and one hundred times higher than the official government expenditure on public health.9

During the past decade, another resource rush has accelerated, centring on rare earth minerals with Kachin State the only part of the country where mining was initially reported to be taking place. This has global consequences, and since 2015 Myanmar has become a key supplier of heavy rare earth minerals to China, providing 50% of the world’s dysprosium and terbium, two crucial elements that are used in high technology equipment. Notably, too, this trend started after China reduced its domestic mining, particularly in heavy rare earth minerals due to environmental and health concerns. No such protections or cautions are practised in Myanmar.

Gold mining activities have also grown. A range of capital and technology is involved: from artisanal mining by individuals and families on a small scale to medium and large-scale operations using heavy machinery and migrant workers. But this is only a background overview. Since the 2021 coup by the military State Administration Council (SAC), environmentally-destructive methods in gold mining have become embedded in the landscape of Kachin state, intoxicating land, rivers and the wider ecology. Conflict, deforestation, land grabbing, and jade, rare earths and gold mining – what has happened to the rural communities and households caught up in the three decades of land rush? 

The era before the land rush in Kachin State was one of relative self-sufficiency. Many farmers in Kachin State cultivated small plots of land primarily for their own consumption and then sold the surplus in local markets. They often hired in labour to supplement family labour during certain times of the year. They also supplemented their ways of life with hunting, foraging, animal husbandry and small-scale artisanal mining. However, since the land rush began, that balance has been shattered, plunging families into a profound "social reproduction squeeze”.

The daily struggle to survive is now difficult on every front, with conflict and forced displacement continuing in many parts of the state. To begin with, the cost of living has soared, making basic necessities like food, health care and education increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible. A recent household survey, for example, confirmed that the money spent on food, health and education dominates family budgets – expenses vital to sustaining the rural households and ensuring everyday survival.10

At the same time, farmers face a crisis living on their own land due to rising labour costs. Ordinary small farmers can no longer compete for workers with the large, capital-controlled entities – the commercial farms, mining operations and related businesses – which offer higher wages and longer hours. This competition has critically changed the economics of farming, with labour now consuming nearly half (49%) of a household's total production costs.

The situation is then further worsened by a lack of government support. Over 75% of households lack formal land titles, locking them out of low-interest public bank loans and essential subsidies, even though the actual availability of such support is very low. Indeed the financial burden is so intense that simply farming more than three acres is now seen as a sign of being "relatively better off" than most neighbours. While a few households have managed to accumulate land and shift to commercial rice production, the vast majority are simply struggling to maintain any agricultural output at all.

To cope with this crisis, families have been forced to adopt a mix of survival strategies. The focus has shifted entirely to generating cash: households report turning to wage labour to stay afloat, seeking jobs away from their own farms. The urgent need to contribute cash to the household income has become a primary driver, pushing family members into what is often migrant or dangerous labour to ensure the family's basic survival. For rural working people, however, urban areas are often the least viable option. Decent paying city jobs are out of reach for many, while the high daily cost of city living means that there is little money left to send back home.

In consequence, a clear pattern in Kachin State has become the significant flow of “rural-rural migration”. In contrast to urban areas, seasonal agricultural work on the one hand and the mining sector on the other hand consistently need labour in the rural countryside. 

In Kachin State, a deepening and unequal interdependence is locking many families into a desperate "double bind" situation: the mining sector offers crucial wage work to struggling rural households while simultaneously worsening the existing vulnerabilities of local communities. Rural families face two main threats under this system: first, when their land is “needed” by the “land rush” actors; and second, when their labour is “needed” by the extractive sector.

We first see these challenges in the devastating effects of land loss. The most immediate vulnerability for rural households is the loss of access to land, which is essential for both peasant agriculture and social sustenance. A household survey across local villages starkly illustrates land inequality: approximately 60% of respondents are smallholders (possessing less than 10 acres), and a further 20% are completely landless. The vast majority of local holdings are thus small, but only about 30% of households hold formal land titles for their plots. In stark contrast, individuals from outside the villages are reported to own parcels exceeding 1,000 acres. This disparity is often used against the community, as one informant shared: 

"Locals sell their lands to the rich people. The rich then pay to KIO to carry out gold mining on the newly-acquired lands, polluting nearby rivers... We cannot protest because they are doing business on their own lands... We cannot say anything." 11

These dynamics are especially devastating for already vulnerable groups. This is especially the experience of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who face double dispossession: first fleeing their lands due to war; and then seeing mining companies seize the lands that they left behind. Said another respondent:

"Villagers from Lawt Ja have to run because of war. But when they were unable to return, the companies started to mine gold in their villages... They haven't received any compensation for their losses from anyone. IDP children thus often end up in low-wage jobs in nearby towns, while displaced families are forced to rent land just to grow meagre crops for sale, leaving them with no more land to call their own.”12

Crucially, the loss of lands extends beyond farming plots. The full impact of the land rush involves the increasing expropriation of land traditionally used for social reproduction and community life. This includes communal resources like forests, rivers, common grazing grounds and even religious places, which are re-allocated to mining. The mining operations do not just "draw" labour from rural households. They literally "draw" land and water away from them, making the landscape impossible for all living beings to survive in. The negative consequences, however, do not end here. As the land dramatically shrinks, villagers are forced to sell their remaining plots, resettle in other places and resort to migrant work – most often at mining sites away from their homes. As one elder from Lawt Ja bitterly shared, "If my head contains traces of gold, they might even dig into my head." 

The conclusions are clear. Only by factoring in the loss of land for both “production” and “social reproduction” can we fully grasp the devastating impact of land rushes. Without land and the societies that live on land, the right of the Kachin and other peoples is undermined to exist as ethnicities with their own cultures, identities, territories and political autonomy. In consequence, in Myanmar, a land of ethnic diversity, the failure to recognise and address these issues remains a perennial cause in the cycles of state breakdown and conflict.

Related to this, another key vulnerability of rural households can be witnessed on the labour front. As farming becomes economically unviable, mining hotspots have become the most popular work destination, particularly for younger family members who must sell their labour under precarious conditions. Although the wages are often low, they are still typically higher than in agricultural wage work. This allows those who travel to work to contribute to the household income pool and stay relatively near to their families.

This does not mean, though, that they receive fair wages in the local mines. Rather, they are exploited because of their vulnerability. Selling their labour at a cheap rate is made possible only because their family has some access to land for food and other living requirements in their home villages as well as income contributions from other household members working away. This means that their mining wages, which are low but desperately needed, are invested in farming and the maintenance of family households, creating a symbiotic, yet unequal, relationship in the movement of labour between agriculture and mining. In essence, family farming, which sustains the land and provides food for the people, and the extractive mining sector, which depletes the environment and undermines social reproduction, become intertwined. 

A local development worker eloquently captures this entanglement:

“Before in the old days in our areas, they grew rice in the rainy season. On the uplands, it would start from May and, on flat farmlands, it begins from June and July. The produce, for example, rice: some portion they keep for consumption and a small portion is reserved as seeds for the next season. And then the rest they sell. Year by year, the context has changed. They have to earn more income. So they end up selling more of their harvest. What I want to say is that the paddy they grow in one year cannot cover them until the next season. So, when it is time for the cultivation season, they are already in hardship.

Since the old days, after the cultivation season, when the weather becomes drier, the villagers go to the mining site. What I mean with mining is the artisanal mining by hand in the rivers and streams nearby. Some would go to mining and some engage in wage work on nearby farms. Later, it becomes more so because of the growing commodity price that they are compelled to do this. It is not enough to feed and take care of the whole households, including paying for school expenses and so on.

What is becoming more difficult at this time is the higher price of agriculture inputs. They cannot cultivate on the same scale as before. So the consequence is that paddy produce is insufficient to cover for the next year. They now face a longer duration of crisis. The current trend is people are going to the rare earth mines.”13

The ongoing armed conflict in Kachin State further complicates this relationship. Displacement and insecurity disrupt agricultural production, pushing more people towards the mines. This creates a vicious cycle whereby conflict exacerbates the very conditions that drive people to seek work in the mines. The same development worker graphically expressed his concerns about the impact of fighting which further disrupts food access in local communities:

“We're also facing a war that has displaced the largest number of rural populations. People cannot grow food in many areas due to security concerns. This has created a surplus of labourers who end up seeking work in the mining industry. I worry about our food security because, unlike before, we're in an extremely difficult situation. The more people who can't farm, the more will turn to mining. It's a snowball effect.”14

In summary, these experiences highlight that what happens in rural communities in Kachin State where land and labour are very much determined by capital, war and power dynamics which animate land rushes.

The promise of quick wealth is a powerful lure, drawing thousands of men and women in their prime to Kachin State from across Myanmar. This mirrors historical moments in other parts of the world like the Nome Gold Rush in Alaska in 1899 which similarly promised the chance of "making instant capitalists, by erasing lines of class, and by making the free labour dream real."15 This seemingly reachable dream is constantly reinforced through songs, movies and personal accounts in different economies and countries. The aspiration for upward mobility is perfectly encapsulated in a popular lyric about miners' lives heard today: "Every miner is a ‘lao ban’ in the making." (“Lao ban” is a Chinese term meaning “boss”, highlighting the ultimate dream of escaping poverty and starting their own business).

The reality on the ground, however, is far harsher. The jade mines of Kachin State are a "place of hard and painful work, temporary windfalls and great temptations."16 Alongside the rare stories of massive wealth are parallel stories of personal and financial ruin driven by such experiences as drug abuse, gambling and the failure to find high-value stones.17

Despite these realities, the mere possibility of improving their socio-economic status, however slim, frequently compels people from farming households to risk their lives. This is a gamble that they are forced to take because agriculture simply cannot provide a basic living in the face of widespread dispossession, expropriation and oppression. This rush has created several boom towns across Kachin State, which are now popular destinations for migrant workers. Magnet centres include Hpakant, Sadung, Pang Wa, Danai, Putao, Myitkyina and Shaduzup, all of which are associated with the extraction of jade, amber, rare earth minerals and gold.

The boom, in turn, is further fuelled by social media advertising that explicitly targets impoverished workers. One advertisement for gold mining jobs reads: “Gold miners in Danai wanted. 400,000 Kyat (US$100) for woman cook and 200,000 (US$50) to 300,000 (US$75) kyat for gold panner.” Another advertisement, this time for rare earth mining jobs, reads: “6 miners wanted. 1 metre (5 yuan). Food allowance per day (30 yuan).” Work in the rare earth mines offer higher salaries of up to 2,000,000 Kyat (US$500) per month, making them very attractive to impoverished working people beyond Kachin State. Describing workers in the mining hotspots is simple. As one local villager summarized: "Find jade, find gold or sell things."

Miners, meanwhile, work long hours – typically more than five days a week and exceeding eight hours per day – performing small but hard manual labour operations alongside giant excavators and machines. The most desperate workers are the jade scavengers, whose working hours extend from late evening to the next dawn. They can only access the company’s waste heap outside of official operation hours, racing against hundreds of other scavengers with only small torchlights to guide their ways through an ocean of rubble, all hoping to find a single valuable stone.

Many, though, believe their troubles are worthwhile. The risks taken by these workers directly translate into cash for their struggling families. Nearly half of migrant miners send a significant portion of their earnings back home to their families, with an average remittance of 1,947,000 Kyat (approximately 430 USD) in the previous months.  Despite this, many miners struggle financially, with 25% reporting being in debt. This finding is also reflected in the household survey conducted where 30% of peasant households with a member engaging in mining work are reported to have debt.

Mining work is also inherently dangerous, with landslides a constant threat, particularly at jade and rare earth mining sites. These hazards are becoming more frequent over the decades, with a 2019 research study conducted on jade scavengers reporting an estimated 500 deaths from landslides in one year. The most notable accident occurred in July 2020, when a massive wave of mud and water caused by heavy rain killed approximately 170 jade scavengers, mostly youths. Such tragedies demonstrate the high-risk conditions in which miners live and work. Many are housed in makeshift temporary shelters, often constructed dangerously close to the unstable pits. Fatalities from landslides occur most often among those living near the mines. Until now, however, no mine owner or local authority has ever been held accountable for tragedies which, with appropriate safeguards, are eminently preventable. 

Exposure to dangerous chemicals is a further source of serious risk to health in gold and rare earth mines. Concentrations of mercury, lead, cadmium and manganese that are associated with gold mining have been reported in the N-Mai, Mali and Ayeyarwady rivers. Ammonium sulphate is also heavily used during in-situ leaching to uncover rare earth minerals close to the N-Mai river. Of major concern, exposure to these chemicals is known to cause debilitating health problems, including skin diseases, respiratory and gastrointestinal problems and, in some cases, cancer. Despite this, workers are provided with minimal or no protective equipment, increasing their risk of injury and illness. Drug use, too, is highly prevalent among workers, especially heroin and methamphetamines, with particular concentration reported in the jade hotspots where drugs are sold cheaply and are very accessible.18 But such consumption is symptomatic of the difficult lives miners live, with users saying that they take such drugs to improve stamina and survive in the harsh working conditions. 

Many women, too, accompany their husbands or come on their own for migrant work in the mines. On arrival, women may work alongside their husbands or engage in petty trades, but they are usually paid lower wages. At the same time, they engage in household maintenance tasks, such as childcare and cooking. In addition, women workers face sexual exploitation by more powerful actors, where they are coerced into sexual engagement with bosses or managers to keep their jobs. In the rare earth mines, especially, women are sometimes recruited specifically for this type of work. However they lack access to proper healthcare to get treatment for sexually transmitted diseases or for unwanted pregnancies. Against this backdrop, many women in mining areas experience lives of daily risk and uncertainty.

The recent land rushes in Kachin State have profoundly impacted the lives of rural working people and peasant households, and at the same time fundamentally transformed the social and economic landscape. The consequences are today clear: displacement, loss of land access and the relentless expansion of extractive industries. During this time, the land rushes have literally “eaten up” the lands that many rural people relied on for their traditional livelihoods and ways of life, swallowing up everything from farmlands, house plots, churches and  schools to forests and watersheds. Such a combination of pressures has, in turn, led to increased precarity for peasant households, forcing them to rely on labour fragmentation strategies, such as migrating for work in the mining and agribusiness sectors, to ensure the daily survival of their families.

The scale of this precarity has had a collective consequence frequently witnessed today, creating a vast and vulnerable “army of cheap labour” ready for profit-seekers to exploit. This growing “army of cheap labour” – from rural households in Kachin State and other parts of Myanmar – has helped to support the rapid growth in the mining sector. In turn, wages earned under deplorable conditions in this industry have provided a crucial but thorny lifeline for impoverished households facing social reproduction crises in rural communities. The outcome is a deepening entanglement in two sectors: peasant farming and the mining industry. Each one is helping to sustain the other in the short term. But what can this mean in the longer term? 

On the one hand, peasant farming is a key pillar in food sovereignty, with its "significant contribution to the maintenance of natural resources”, including soil productivity, water, biodiversity and carbon-capture, which are often posed as alternative systems to erode capitalism. Using minimal chemical inputs, for example, peasant farming is considered to mitigate climate change and environmental degradation, effectively "cooling the earth". The mining industry, in contrast, has a destructive, non-reproductive relationship with the land and actively fuels the ecological crisis, essentially "heating up the earth".

Such challenges exist around the world, and Myanmar today is an important test case. Despite the different character of the farming and mining sectors, both of them are now symbiotically linked in events taking place in Kachin State. Patterns in the flow of rural labour reveal the mining industry and peasant farming together prop up rural households. The former provides wage income, and the latter provides a source of cheap “super-workers”. But, in a country deep in conflict, who is truly benefiting from this land rush, is it sustainable, and what will happen in Kachin politics and society as a result? There are many fears in Kachin State and Myanmar more broadly among young people and dispossessed communities for their future.

Is land everything to the rural poor? In the context of conflict and land rush in Kachin State, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Farming remains the primary means of subsistence and income generation for many communities, enabling the daily survival of rural households. Land also provide spaces for housing, backyard food gardens, communal bonding and access to forests, rivers and public infrastructure. Without access to land, the hardships would be far greater. Moreover, land provides the very foundation of a territorial space for the continuity of ethno-cultural and autonomous political systems. As such, the right to land is of integral importance to the identity, progress and survival of a people.

However, as the Kachin case shows, access to land alone is not enough. It must be paired with redistributive reforms, policies that are focused on improving production, working conditions and access to state subsidies. The policies of successive central governments, however, have been structured to favour a powerful few in recognising land rights and land use, deliberately disadvantaging the local people and majority population. Critics also say that this applies to de facto state bodies like the KIO and other ethnic-based militia groups that administer territory and operate inside the state. This, in turn, leads to a differentiation within many farming families: while some sink deeper into debt and precarity, others survive by “digging in”, maintaining their precarious socio-economic position through the self-exploitation of their family members through labour.

Driven by the land rushes, Kachin’s rural working people are surviving under a system of what is known as “immiserizing growth”: an economy that expands wealth for a few at the expense of majority. This system compels working people to enter the mines, despite knowing the devastating environmental impact. The rapid expansion of the mining sector, in turn, drowns out other development possibilities, forcing workers to take their share of resulting profits only through meagre wages and rare windfalls, which then flow back into rural households.

There is therefore a serious need to rethink agrarian reform. At root, it must be recognised that wealth generated in the extractive sector is vastly different from that of the agriculture sector in which many farming families and communities work and live. To solve this,  proposals for reform must move beyond simply redistributing or restituting land and address the need for redistributing wealth. Recent efforts by the KIO, for example, to return lands to the people from former concession areas given to the military-linked Yuzana Company is laudable. But there is great need for further supportive measures. 

In summary, the immense wealth generated from Kachin State is currently concentrated in a small pack of elites who freeride on the natural resources and unequal power relations in the territory. It is long since time that a halt was made to all forms of exploitation and economic behaviour that breed social inequality and environmental destruction. As a local activist put it vividly, "We need to protect our villages from mining. By the time we achieve a federal system, there might be no land left.”19

His words are a stark reminder of the importance of the land question when considering the future of Kachin State and Myanmar more broadly. Induced by the 2021 military coup, we are currently passing through another cycle of civil war, state failure and land rush. More than ever peace and inclusive reform are essential if our peoples and societies are ever to enjoy a sustainable and progressive future. Focusing on the importance of land reform is vital, and there has never been a more urgent time to start.