The Rubber Board – in co-operation with Rubber Producers Societies, self-help groups and other voluntary organisations – is organising an awareness campaign to propagate the message of sustainable rubber cultivation.
The campaign is in the backdrop of fall in prices of rubber and sensitise growers to adopt all probable means to increase income from plantations.
The campaign is scheduled to be conducted from April 20 to May 29.
The Board proposes to meet a minimum of one lakh small growers through meetings in the rubber-growing belts of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Apart from the main theme of scientific replanting, topics on productivity and quality enhancement, quality planting material generation, organic cultivation of food crops as intercrops, ancillary income generation activities, farm mechanisation, certification of rubber holdings, soil and moisture conservation, scientific tapping, safety parameters in agricultural practices, disease control measures, etc will be discussed in the meetings. Rubber, being a long-term crop, priority should be for realising higher yield from the holdings for long periods to make the cultivation profitable.
Planting with high yielding clones and adopting scientific cultivation, tapping, processing etc are essential for this.
But the productivity in many of the existing plantations is showing a decreasing trend, owing to many reasons.
With increasing expenses, rubber cultivation cannot be made profitable if the productivity is low.
The Board is recommending a number of techniques to increase productivity of the existing holdings.
By adopting these, small holders can manage the holdings fairly successfully even when prices are low. These aspects will be discussed in the campaign.