MALAYSIAN RUBBER BOARD (MRB) TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ESTABLISHMENT OF LOCAL SMALLHOLDERS COOPERATIVE

Rubber provides an interesting contrast. Large rubber plantations often opened areas by establishing processing facilities, markets, and roads via settlement programs where locals or migrants provide labor to establish the plantation and acquire land as outgrowers. In some cases, as in the FELDA program in Malaysia and the Indonesian transmigration program, these were state sponsored. After processing and infrastructure was established, production almost entirely shifted from large plantations to 2-3 ha farms with smallholders now making up 80 percent of world rubber production (Hayami 2010). Rubber’s high labor intensity, emergence of production systems adapted to smallholders’ capital constraints, and more...