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...
