Automated rubber tapping to overcome labour shortage in rubber plantations
Natural rubber producers find it difficult to find tappers amidst issues where the younger generation is not keen on rubber tapping as a vocation but there is good news on the horizon.
The Malaysian rubber industry has come up with automated rubber tapping, revealed the Malaysian delegate at the 6th Annual Rubber Conference of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) held in Colombo last week.
ANRPC consists of natural rubber producing countries – Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
At this forum when discussing the problems and difficulties that are confronted by the natural rubber producers, one delegate from the audience pointed out that labour has become a major constraint in the rubber producing industry.
In response to this query, the Malaysian delegate said that they are trying to put up their own automated rubber tapping and once it is finalised they would go for commercialization but one of the obstacles to introduce it to the market is the high cost of its production which would be around US$10 per tree tapped.
In response to another query the Malaysian delegate said that once this venture is successful, they would also try to introduce robots into rubber tree tapping.
Dr. Ulrich Hoffmann, Policy Advisor, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) making his presentation “Sustainable Natural Rubber: Necessity or Demand – pull?” said that deforestation and child labour in rubber plantations would be some of the problems. But, he noted that when compared to other tree crops in the tropics the rubber producing industry would stand out on its environmental merits.
On the environmental problems of natural rubber production, it was noted that there would be temporary loss of habitat, bio-diversity at various stages of production, waste water contamination and the high yielding varieties that require some chemical fertilizer and then fungicides are some of them.
However on balance, he said that, on the whole with regard to natural rubber production there are only a few negatives as against many positive ecological facts. The negatives for the most part can be avoided by proper cultivation, Dr. Hoffmann said. He said that they have recently created sustainability standards initiative and sustainability standards is an initiative of five UN agencies which are practically united in dealing with all issues with regard to all aspects of natural rubber and it has explicit mandates to deal with sustainability standards to arrive and extend activities and capacity building. He pointed out what is important here are the voluntary sustainability standards as they are important for market entry and sustainable development of the industry.
Dr. Kamarul Baharain bin Basir, Secretary General, ANRPC speaking on ‘Current Status of Natural Rubber Production in ANRPC Member Countries’ said that there is an annual growth of 3.2 per cent while the total production figure for 2012 stood at 10.647 million tons of natural rubber.
The breakdown of the supply of the producing countries shows Thailand leading with 30.5 per cent of the total production, followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Cambodia.
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