With over 10,000 people living in some of the IDP camps, there is only a very limited amount of space to grow vegetables and other nutrient-rich crops. In most all of Kachin state, feed for pigs would come from the surrounding forests, with no need to buy animal feed. The overcrowded situations in the camps make sustaining such a lifestyle impossible. It is mostly up to the women of the family to walk for hours to find areas to grow vegetables or gather wood for cooking. In many cases these women end up working for large Chinese agriculture businesses who leverage their economic power in these easily exploitable situations.
Chinese sugar cane and banana plantations have taken over much of the Kachin landscape, since the conflict started in 2011. Planation work is known for its notoriously dangerous working conditions.