Rubber Plantation Development Program

Big plantations of 1 hectare used to be run by rubber multinationals which provide all growers the necessary resources for planting.

It was a centralized operation where there is a plantation, processing and market. But due to CARP, these lands were distributed to tenants so the lands have been broken up and there are no resources for planting. The industry was neglected, production fell, and trees grew old.

With this situation, PRIA requested the Department of Agriculture to include Rubber in the commercial/indusrial crops committee thus a sub-committee on rubber development was created with Ms. Basilisa Ho as Chairman and Asst. Clarito Barron as Vice-Chairman, government agencies & private sector as members.

The technical working group of the committee has planned a short term program to start with by putting up a 1 ectare demo farm in Zamboanga & Basilan and for the government to provide the necessary resources for planting and PRIA directors/ members for financial support. The PRIA Demo farm will be launched in July.

Clarito M. Barron, Bureau of Plant Industry, Assistant Director, said in an interview at Manila Bulletin that the Philippines planned a five year development program involving 200,000 hectares of new planting and another 200,000 hectares of rehabilitation which will enable the country to augment its potential of exporting rubber to industrialized countries.

At the target of 400,000 hectares of planting and rehabilitation in five years, latex production is seen to reach to 500,000 metric tons as each hectare produces one metric ton of latex. Rubber growing can be highly profitable as this industrial crop does not require a lot of water for irrigation unlike rice and the land in Mindanao is highly suitable for it.

The National Rubber Industry Development Program (NRIDP) is hope to raise the Philippine existing export to Malaysia and to certain industrialized countries such as Taiwan and Singapore. The NRIDP can be financed by Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development of the Philippines which have readily available loans for long gestation crops such as rubber and fruit trees.

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