Rice is the staple food for about half of the world's population and mills are the essential processing link between farmers and consumers, making rice milling one of the most important agro-processing sectors globally. This paper assesses changes in rice and paddy prices, and processing margins during the COVID-19 pandemic shock through the lens of rice mills in Myanmar. Our data, collected through telephone surveys with a large number of medium- and large-scale rice millers in September 2020, reveal significant disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, including transportation restrictions, employee lay-offs, and reduced operations relative to normal times. However, milling margins, and paddy and rice prices were mostly stable, showing only minor increases compared to 2019. Rice prices increased most for the varieties linked to export markets, though the gains were mostly passed through to farmers as higher paddy prices. Similarly, higher rice prices achieved by modern mills—due to extra processing—were mostly transmitted to producers. Our results also highlight the major importance of byproducts—broken rice and rice bran—sales to overall milling margins as byproduct sales allowed mill operators to sustain negative paddy-to-rice margins.

中文翻译：

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食品价格、加工和冲击：来自大米和 COVID-19 的证据


大米是世界上约一半人口的主食，加工厂是农民和消费者之间的重要加工环节，使碾米成为全球最重要的农产品加工部门之一。本文通过缅甸碾米厂的视角，评估了 COVID-19 大流行冲击期间大米和稻谷价格的变化以及加工利润。我们通过 2020 年 9 月对大量中型和大型碾米厂进行电话调查收集的数据显示，COVID-19 大流行造成了重大干扰，包括交通限制、员工裁员以及运营量较正常情况减少。然而，碾磨利润以及稻谷和大米价格基本稳定，与 2019 年相比仅出现小幅上涨。与出口市场相关的品种的大米价格涨幅最大，但收益大部分因稻谷价格上涨而转嫁给了农民。同样，现代工厂由于额外加工而获得的大米价格上涨大部分都传导给了生产者。我们的结果还凸显了副产品（碎米和米糠）销售对整体碾米利润的重要性，因为副产品销售使碾米厂经营者能够维持负稻米利润。