Aging Indian rubber trees cause concern

(Monday, September 18, 2006)

Coonoor (Tamil Nadu)- India's Teluga Portal reports that an official with a planter's association said that even though the country is riding high on production, prices and exports, it is testing time for Indian natural rubber, as the scope for sustaining the momentum has been stretched out with little room for elasticity.

Presenting the latest trend and outlook for the plantation commodity at the 113th annual conference of the United Planters' Association of Southern India (Upasi) Rubber Board chairman Sajen Peter said the potential for increasing production further had been limited due to the exploitation of the ageing trees.

"Unscientific and excessive harvesting by a section of small growers is likely to take its toll on the production potential in the coming years. Higher price realization has also made the growers complacent about replanting of aged trees, leading to lower yields," said Peter, in his address to around 600 delegates, consisting of planters, small growers, traders and other stakeholders from the three southern states.

With a majority of rubber trees ripe in age, tappable area is set to decline over the next six years to 34 percent from a high of 65 percent in the late nineties.

India is the fourth largest producer and consumer of natural rubber in the world. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are the top three rubber producers, accounting for more than half the world's production.

"Age is the single factor determining the yield of a rubber tree for a given clone. While a tree normally attains the required girth for tapping in the seventh year of planting, the yield, which increases from the fourth year, stabilises in the 13th year of tapping. Though rubber trees have an economical life span of 29-30 years, the yield begins to decline from the 14th year of tapping. In the absence of timely replanting by growers over the last two decades, prospects of tapping more rubber from the existing aged trees appears bleak, leading to production decline till 2012," the chairman pointed out. Attributing the increase in rubber prices to global economic recovery and resultant higher demand for rubber, especially from China, Peter said the market was, however, undergoing an automatic correction after the boom and the price may not remain high for long.

On the domestic front, consumption increased by six percent in 2005-06 to 801,110 metric tons from 755,405 in 2004-05. Similarly, exports increased to 73,830 mt in 2005 06 for better price realization in the international markets from 46,150 mt in the previous year.

Imports, however, declined to 45,285 mt from a high of 72,835 mt in the same period.

"Production for the current fiscal (2006-07) is estimated to be about 831,000 tonnes and consumption is projected at about 841,000 tonnes. Till Sep 11, 40,334 tonnes of rubber was exported and 24,294 tonnes were imported," he disclosed.