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 Rubber plantations everywhere

Rubber blankets Phuket Island
The island's hills remain green, but this is the green of a vast monoculture, no longer that of lush rainforests

Rubber plantation seen everywhere in Souther Thailand [18256 bytes]Rubber is Phuket’s most important cash crop, generating six times the revenue of its nearest competitor, the coconut But contrary to what one might expect, the rubber industry hasn’t been the preserve of the classical rich planter complete with “great house” and army of servants.

Plantation worker is getting rubber milk [19323 bytes]Most planters are small holders, each family themselves cultivating l6rai (one acre equals 2.53rai) or less. All told, there are more than 4500 families who own plantations and in total about 15,000 people are engaged in rubber cultivation on the island.

One of the process to make the rubber sheets [10860 bytes]Historically, there was little incentive to consolidate big plantations. Most wealthy families were preoccupied with the easy riches to be had in tin mining. Families who didn’t have a lot of money, on the other hand, found rubber a most attractive prospect. Land was cheap, techniques of cultivation were easier to learn and to practise than those needed to look after fruit orchards, for example. Unlike with rice, which required annual planting, after an initial three years of hard work and then a further wait of four years one could expect to settle back to decades of relatively easy living.
 

Trying rubber sheets seen in many places in Krabi and Phang Nga [18453 bytes]

Rubber sheets is drying along the road from Phuket to Phang Nga [13612 bytes]


For related stories:
 

"The Rubber Rush", published in PHUKET MAGAZINE Vol. 12 No. 6 2001 (30kb)
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