Rubber Board launches ‘Replant & Reap Reward’ campaign to boost production
Aimed at making the country self-sufficient in natural rubber production, the Rubber Board has initiated a campaign — ‘Replant and Reap rewards’ — in the traditional growing areas and the north east.
M Vasanthagesan, Executive Director, Rubber Board, launched the campaign, which will be continued up to February 15, 2025.
The Board is organising around 1,000 meetings across the country, giving emphasis on topics such as quality planting material generation, adoption of good agricultural practices, adoption of holdings, European Union Deforestation Regulation as an opportunity and the need for preparedness, planting operations, socioeconomic benefits of rubber cultivation, self-tapping, replanting of senile plantations etc.
According to Rubber Board officials, there has been a huge gap between the production and consumption of natural rubber in the country despite the significant improvements made to improve production and productivity in small holdings.
Pruning exports
To bridge the gap and to make the country self-sufficient in NR production, scientific and systematic activities are required. Hence, it has been decided to propagate the message of Natural Rubber Cultivation for Sustainable Development in the mass contact programme, the officials said.
India ranks 5th in the world in terms of production and second in terms of consumption after China. The production during 2023-24 was 8.75 lakh tonnes against the consumption of 14.15 lakhtonnes. The production-consumption gap needs to be addressed seriously.
If a concerted effort is not made to enhance domestic production, the imports of various forms of NR to bridge the gap of demand-supply would become inevitable and that may pose serious challenges to the sustainable growth and competitiveness of the sector with negative impact on the domestic prices.
The consumption forecast due to rapid growth of the automobile industry and overall industrialization is around 17.7 million tonnes in 2030.
The main task of the campaign is to step up domestic production and to arrest the drain of foreign exchange occurring through imports.