Agricultural Geography by Leslie Symons

Author:Leslie Symons [Symons, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Anthropology
ISBN: 9780429727597
Google: tCyNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-08T04:52:24+00:00

For all producers, but most of all for the large commercial estates, the problem today is to obtain the highest possible yield per tapper, because tapping is the largest single item in production costs. Increasing the frequency of tapping or the number of trees per hectare may result in higher yield per hectare, but lower yield per tapper, and is accordingly undesirable. Efficiency is therefore judged by the standards common in commercial farming in countries where labour is short, rather than by the criterion of yield per hectare normal for food crops in tropical Asia. However, attention to plant breeding and scientific management have made possible greatly increased yields in recent years. New high-yielding strains produce some 2000 kg/ha compared with about 500 kg/ha normal for older rubber. Extensive replanting with high yielding rubber has been carried out in Malaysia with government assistance for both estates and smallholdings. Smallholders were subsidised to the extent of two-thirds of the cost of replanting, and the government made clones and seedlings from its nurseries cheaply available. The cost of the scheme was met partly by a cess on exports. During the 1960s, over half of the total area in rubber, including a quarter of the smallholdings, was planted with high-yielding strains.

Not all former rubber land is, however, being replanted in this way. To reduce the impact of low prices, many estates have diversified their production to some extent, the oil palm being an alternative in Malaysia.

In 1975 the total area planted with rubber was about 2 million hectares with 645,000 hectares under oil palms. Under a new plan the aim was to replant a further 200,000 hectares of rubber and to consolidate many of the smaller holdings. To be economically viable it was considered that a smallholding should have more than 3 hectares of rubber whereas many still had as little as 1 hectare.

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