FEATURE: Declining trends of SL's rubber industry 

By Dr. L.M.K. Tillekeratne, Former Director, RRI, UNIDO expert in Rubber Processing

Sri Lanka is the pioneer natural rubber grower in the world on a commercial scale even though the birth place of the rubber tree is the Amazon region in Brazil. But now the rubber production in the country has fallen down to 12th position and under this trend, further deterioration is inevitable. It is sad that countries like India, Cambodia and Myanmar that entered the rubber industry much later have overtaken Sri Lanka. Countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar obtained agronomic advice mainly from Sri Lankan scientists and have been able to have a three to five-fold increase in their annual rubber production purely by carefully following the scientific agronomic advice given by Sri Lankans.
According to prominent economic analysts, this decline in Sri Lanka is due to the ineffectiveness of the Rubber Development Department (RDD) which took over the task of managing the small holder sector (SHH) of the industry that constitutes 65% of the sector in the country. 
Where the productivity of the rubber lands in Kg/Ha/Yr is concerned, until the last couple of years, those small holder farm units of sizes between 0.1 hectare to 8 hectares recorded higher average productivity over and above the average productivity of estates managed by planters. But today, they have fallen behind the average productivity of RPC managed estates.  There are many reasons as to why the productivity of both these sectors has deteriorated so badly.

One major reason for the drop in production in SHH and in estates managed by the RPCs is the poor price of rubber in the world market during the past decade. But on earlier similar occasions, RPCs never followed unwarranted shortsighted latex extraction techniques to ruin the plantation; mainly because their activities were guided by the Rubber Research Institute (RRI) scientists when the estates were under JEDB and SPC management. But, today they do whatever they wish, to satisfy their company superiors who know nothing about the long term effect of those rash techniques used for extracting latex over and above what is biologically available in the tree.
It is very sad to note that in most of the other RPC managed estates, resorted to bad extraction techniques to extract more latex from the trees far above what is biologically possible to extract and hence today in most of them the percentage of Tapping Panel Dried trees (TPD) present is over 50%. In other words, more than half the healthy trees in such estates are without a bark to yield even a drop of latex. Virtually they are like culled cows in a dairy farm. If proper agro practices are followed, this percentage should be below10%.  
When you travel on the Colombo-Ratnapura road or on Colombo- Matara high way, right along the way you see rubber estates with healthy trees with a big canopy. But, how many of you are aware that most of them are useless trees not yielding any latex due to the above reason. 
Reasons for this downfall of the industry, is because, both the RDD and the RPC managed estates were either not aware of the new recommendations made by the RRI or they have not bothered to respect them and have followed short sighted rash exploitation techniques to make more rubber to cover their losses.
The other reason visible is the glaring communication gap between the RRI scientists and the RPC managed plantation. Regional meetings conducted to discuss new developments in the industry and in the plantation and the problems faced by the estate managers in their management activities have not been conducted for years after setting up of the plantation rehabilitation and monitoring committee SCM by the Ministry of Plantation Industries (MPI). As a result, not only the RPCs, even RDD officers have been doing things the way they want ignoring RRI recommendations. Scientific committee meetings conducted by the RRI for planters and the RDD officers have not been held during the past.
The valuable rubber bulletin published twice a year compiling all research findings of scientists and economic analysis of the industry done by reputed economists both local and overseas, for the benefit of the plantation community has not been published since middle of 2016. “Rubber Puwath “the only news bulletin published for the benefit of SHH in Sinhala” has not been published for years.  A policy decision was taken by the MPI in 1995 to eliminate the low yielding clone PB 86 which became susceptible to Corenespora leaf disease, from the plantation by destroying even the bud wood nurseries maintained by the RDD and RPCs. But, according to statistics published by conducting an island wide survey carried out by the RRI in 2012, it has been observed that even 15 years after banning the propagation of PB 86 clone, there is 29% PB 86 still in the plantation. That means, neither the RPCs nor the RDD has followed the ruling given by the MPI to eliminate this low yielder from the plantation. This factor has also contributed to the declining yield of the rubber plantation in the country. Further, the RRIC 121 population by then has reached 33% of the total extent which is more than the recommended norm 20%.  Hence, a decision was taken by the MPI on the advice of the RRI to reintroduce RRIC 100 clone to the plantation to be planted in non- traditional areas and also to discourage planting 121 in the country for some time. According to the survey carried out by the RRI in 2020 the clone population in the country is in a worse situation now. 
According to this survey results RRIC 121 population in the whole country which includes rubber smallholders has risen to unexpectedly high level of 73% of the total extent while the world reputed RRIC 100 population is stagnating at a low level of only 8%. Also, the group 1 recommended RRIC 102 clone population in the country is relatively insignificant. Hence, unless a joint effort is made by the RRI jointly with RPCC and the RDD with the active intervention of the MPI to bring the clone balance in the country to a satisfactory level, the rubber industry will be doomed to RIP! Now, if a pathogen affecting the clone RRIC 121 enters the Sri Lankan plantation, we may have to take a larger effort than the effort taken by the government to control COVID-19 virus today to save the rubber plantation.
According to the new clone recommendation of the RRI, RRIC 100 is recommended only for non-traditional areas and for Smallholder farmers only. But, now, after the clone survey in 2020, RRIC 100 is reintroduced to plant from 2021 until it covers about 20% of the total extent.

RPCCs should plant each clone only up to 10%, to cover only 50%. The balance 50% from the rest of group II and III clones.

Brining the cost of production down

The other reason for incurring losses by most RPCC is the high tapping cost which is nearly 75% of the cost of manufacture of rubber. This could easily be minimized and convert losses to profits by increasing the intake per tapper per day to at least 9 kg. That could be easily achieved by allowing tappers to tap 275 to 300 latex yielding trees per day. In order to encourage tappers to bring in more latex, offering a bonus payment of Rs 5 per extra kilos brought over 6 kg and Rs 10 per extra kilos brought over 8 kg, is also highly beneficial to the plantation.
   But, in most of the tapping tasks in losses incurring estates have given 300 trees for tapping, out of which 40 to 50% are unproductive due to TPD. Further the supervisors must go to the field regularly and see how many trees have been tapped by the tapper without leaving out trees in places where the access is difficult due to uneven terrain. This can also be double checked by measuring the bark consumption regularly.
It must be recorded here with appreciation that some of the estates under RPCs are constantly incurring high profits purely because they have complied with the RRI recommended agro management practices. Not only that, they have been able to show that the rain guards introduced by the RRI to minimize the crop loss caused by rain interference on tapping has seen an annual crop increase of over 30%. Now they are engaged in low frequency d4 or d5 tapping trials on their own thereby vastly reducing the tapper shortage in their estates. In these trials trees are tapped only once in 4 days or five days respectively. But, most of the other estates still give baseless reasons and refrain from making use of rain guards to improve their latex yields without rain interference.

Therefore, if there is a wholehearted effort to improve the rubber industry by the newly formed government, they must first reinitiate a close interaction between the RRI and RPCs and also with the RDD regional offices and resume inspections done by the RRI officers in RPC estates and even in rubber smallholders without further delay to identify the wrong detrimental procedures followed by them and advise them to follow remedial measures to bring them back to the correct level. 
The RRI must take immediate action to publish the bulletin and “Rubber Puwath” regularly as it was done during the past to educate farmers on new research developments. One must keep in mind that the damage caused by the RPCs by following unacceptable exploitation techniques to draw latex from the trees far above what is biologically available, must be stopped immediately for the sustainability of this valuable industry highly beneficial to the economy of Sri Lanka and also equally to the environment of the country.
The Sri Lanka rubber industry is right now at a severe crisis level. Yet a stitch in time could save nine.