In July 2024, Maung Tu, 40, a manager at a mining company, purchased a betel nut farm of 2.4 hectares, or 6 acres, near the southern tip of Myanmar for nearly seven times the market price, paying approximately 200 million kyat (about $50,000 at the unofficial exchange rate). He has little interest in the cash crop, despite the long-held cultural tradition of chewing betel nuts in the country. Instead, his focus is on extracting lead from the land. “If the price of lead is good, the land price is good. They are directly proportional. If I am confident about the land’s potential, I will pay whatever price they ask,” Maung Tu said. This is because while mining lead is more dangerous, the profit margin is staggeringly high compared to farming. Once mined, the raw materials are transported to Thailand, where the lead is cleaned and processed, and then on to China, which has long imported lead ore from Myanmar. Globally, the vast majority of lead consumption is for use in the production of lead-acid batteries, but local sellers said they don’t know who the eventual Chinese buyers are or what the lead is used for — but said armed groups in Myanmar and Thai traders are involved. In the past, exporters had to contend with both community protests and a complex licensing process. Since the February 2021 coup, though, these obstacles have disappeared. This has led to a mining boom in Tanintharyi, Myanmar’s southernmost region. Since the coup, orchards, farmland…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed