Tech way forward for rubber smallholders

Major contributor: Rubber smallholders contribute 90% or more of all rubber produced in Malaysia.

IT is an established fact that rubber smallholders, over decades of their existence, have been subjected to boom and bust cycles as characterised by vagaries of widely fluctuating rubber prices. They are at the mercy and held to ransom by rubber prices, over which they have no influence or control whatsoever.

The bust phases due to depressed prices inevitably drive them into cyclical periods of poverty, which renders mere survival economically very challenging and insurmountable.