The natural rubber market is showing positive signs after a long slump that sent rubber farmers to more lucrative endeavors.The price of the benchmark RSS-4 grade touched Rs 132 per kilogram on Thursday. This came after the collapse of RSS-4 price to Rs 94 per kilogram on January 30, 2016, following a boom that lasted eight years.
According to a report in The Financial Express, around 12 lakh odd rubber farmers have lost their confidence and trust in the plantation business. Around 85% of the rubber farmers only have small-holdings which made this price-blow all the more devastating for them.
The Financial Express report says that according to SibyMonipally, general secretary of the Indian Rubber Growers’ Association (IRGA), the recovery made by the international price as well as the demand by the local consuming industries contribute to the improvement of the domestic prices and demand.
Next to Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, and Malaysia, India is the sixth largest natural rubber producer in the world. Eighty percent of India’s rubber comes from Kerala followed by Tripura. But Kerala farmers feel that this recovery in natural rubber prices is only temporary and may be in tune with the rising and falling of petroleum prices.
Untended plantations around Kottayam, Idukky, Pattanamthitta and Kochi offers the depressing feel of deserted ghost towns as lorries gather away logs of felled rubber trees to be used as rubberwood for furniture.
The president of the United Planters Association of South India (UPASI), NarendranathDharmaraj, strikes the alarm bells as he highlights that the total tapping area in rubber has declined to as low as 56% of its earlier marks. Many good farmers have turned to cultivating banana, nutmeg and pineapple but some face topographical and agro-climatic hurdles in the crop shift.
A subsidy scheme which guarantees a minimum price of Rs 150 per kilogram of natural rubber sheets procured from the local market has been offered by the Kerala government. But this scheme still proved unattractive for farmers as it only covers two acres of rubber-land per farmer.
Rubber Board spokesmen tried to encourage farmers by quoting forecasts from the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC), saying that the rubber market will bounce back to its boom era. Still, farmers refused to return to their Kerala plantations. Some of them were even forced to give out their lands to real estate groups to cater to the ever-increasing demand in residential property business.
Source: Financial Express