Over the past decade, the Government of Myanmar has allocated nearly 2 million acres of land in large concessions to local agribusiness companies and, since 2010, to foreign investors. Some of the large concessions have proven commercially successful as farming businesses.Other concessionaires appear to have limited interest in farming and instead gain land rights in order to enable mineral extraction, lumbering or land rental to smallholder sharecroppers. For some categories of commercial agriculture and agribusiness, large concessions offer a viable model for meeting the stringent quantity, timing and quality demands of high-value products and niche export markets. However, these large holdings do not offer a feasible exit for the vast majority of Myanmar’s landless poor, given common tendencies to mechanize large-scale operations. In practice, overly rapid mechanization on large farms risks displacing labor and thereby depressing rural wage rates, thus further constraining the short-term survival strategies of the rural landless. Under most crops and agro-ecological conditions in Myanmar, smallholder farmers offer significant potential for productivity growth, increased competitiveness and expanded employment for landless households (Box 1).