The Rubber Board to promote self tapping
PR / IH News Desk
KOTTAYAM, September 21 2020: The Rubber Board launches an intensive campaign (Campaign 2020) to promote self-tapping and Low frequency tapping among rubber growers. The campaign will start on September 22 2020 at 100 Rubber Board field stations in Kerala and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu. Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, VS Sunil Kumar, Agriculture Minister, Kerala Govt. and Dr KN Raghavan, Chairman and Executive Director, Rubber Board will give messages to farmers at 10.30 am Tuesday through Rubber Board Facebook Live.
At each meeting, one self tapping grower would do the honours and explain the gains he made by adopting LFT and self tapping to other farmers. It is expected that hearing from a peer who has successfully implemented these innovations would help farmers to gain more confidence in them. There would also be training programmes in tapping for all farmers interested in learning/ upgrading this skill. Rubber Board is planning to cover 50000 farmers during this campaign. The grower meetings will be held in compliance with the regulatory conditions of Kovid 19 pandemic.
Tapping charges constitute the largest single component, accounting for almost 60%. This high expenditure can be brought down by reducing the frequency of tapping and grower doing the tapping by himself. It has been scientifically proved by Rubber Board that once a week tapping would yield as much latex from the tree as tapping once in two days. Further, adoption of Low Frequency Tapping (LFT) also helps to improve the longevity of the rubber tree.
On a similar note, adoption of LFT would help the grower to start tapping trees himself. The average size of a plantation is 0.57 ha, which would work out to approx 200 rubber trees in a plantation. Hence a grower who adopts LFT need to do tapping and related activities only on one day in a week, allowing him to pursue other occupation on other days. This would also help him to bring down the cost of production and make rubber farming more commercially viable.
Adoption of LFT and self tapping by small growers would also help to utilise the services of professional rubber tappers more productively and optimally by channelising their services through Rubber Tapper’s Banks. This would help to bring in more untapped plantations under tapping as well, thus increasing the overall production of rubber within the country.
There has been a reawakening in the agricultural sector in the aftermath of the changes taking place the world over due to Covid-19 pandemic.
We see many instances around us where persons have returned from other occupations and taken up farming and related activities in right earnest. Rubber Board has initiated training programmes aimed at enabling such persons to tap their own plantations or to invest gainfully in activities involving processing of rubber.