Maung Nu Sein needs fuel to plow, and fertilizer to nourish his rice as planting season approaches. But the ships carrying his crucial cargo are trapped 2,000 miles away by Iran’s stranglehold of one of the world’s most important waterways.
Now, the farmer is running the calculations. Can he survive when the costs of fuel and farming come to more than he earns from selling rice?
“There are many farmers who are abandoning their land as they have been struggling with everything,” the 72-year-old told CNN from his home in western Myanmar.
A civil war in his country, sparked by a military coup in 2021, had been raging for five years before the US…