Shaping the future of rubber agroforestry

The World Agroforestry Centre's dissemination methods in local languages were highly effective.

The World Agroforestry Centre launched its research on rubber agroforestry in Indonesia in the mid-1990s. By then, many development agencies had already spent millions of dollars promoting high-yielding monoclonal rubber plantations, and these were beginning to replace traditional jungle rubber systems on many smallholdings.

"The monoclonal plantations gave farmers much higher yields than jungle rubber gardens, and therefore better incomes," says World Agroforestry Centre economist Suseno Budidarsono. "But there were also some disadvantages." They required considerable capital investment, which many households could not afford. The conversion of jungle rubber to monoclonal rubber systems was also causing significant losses of biodiversity.

These trends, and the conversion of jungle rubber to oil palm, prompted the Centre and its partners to devise alternative systems of rubber agroforestry that would improve smallholder yields while retaining some biodiversity. The story of this research, spanning over a decade and a half, is told in a booklet in the 'Tree for Change' series. Among other things, this publication highlights the Centre's success in encouraging farmers to adopt its rubber agroforestry systems.

In 2010, researchers compared rates of adoption in 30 villages in Sanggau District, West Kalimantan, and 30 villages in Bungo District, Jambi. In villages where the project had been active, the area and number of households adopting the new systems increased tenfold. More surprisingly, rates of adoption in villages where the project had not been active were almost as high.

The researchers identified several reasons for this. First, smallholders in Indonesia had heard of clonal rubber varieties and their advantages, and many had tried them – not always with success – in the past. This meant that it did not require a huge effort to promote new clones. Second, the World Agroforestry Centre had been a key source of information about clones for farmers who were not associated with its present or past projects. This suggests that its dissemination methods in local languages were highly effective. Finally, the government and development agencies had actively promoted the use of new clones.

Pye-Smith C. 2011. Rich Rewards for Rubber Agroforestry? Trees for Change No 8. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre.