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Empowering rubber smallholders

Agricultural development in Southeast Asian countries has followed similar objectives and goals, mainly involved in the need to provide a sustainable livelihood for smallholders and to improve their productivity and income.


Natural rubber

The farmers, especially smallholders, have had to try to change their ways of management and to improve their potentials and abilities for increasing farm efficiency and production leading to increased farm income.

However, it was found that the progress of rubber smallholder development was less than the achievements of macro-agricultural development. It is also becoming evident that the more development, the more increase in inequity of rights and income gap of people between the plantation sector and the non-plantation sector.

This situation prevails in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, which depend on exports of agricultural produces such as rubber, oil palm and tea. More than 70 percent of total world rubber production comes from Southeast Asia, with more than twenty million farmers in Southeast Asia growing rubber.

Issues

This leads to many questions concerning the farmers, especially smallholders in this region. Why are they still so poor, why is their income so low, what are the main constraints to improving their standard of living, what are the main factors influencing farmers’ achievements, and how can farmers’ potential and ability be improved?

The current standard of living of farmers has not improved from what was in the past. Farmers still use low agricultural technologies such as low yielding clones, indigenous practices and management strategies in their production systems and they have limited skills such as inefficient decision-making processes, very little initiative in innovations, and a low educational level.

It is therefore, relevant to examine (1) the possible systems that would help to adjust and improve rubber smallholding farms’ efficiency and productivity, and (2) the components of empowerment that might help in moving farm household income towards sustainability.

Land extent

The total land extent in the NR world is 10.3 million hectares. It is dominated by the Asian region with 93 percent of the extent.

Smallholdings dominance is seen in about 75 to 80 percent of the total extent (table 1) and this is expected to grow further in the major rubber producing countries.

Productivity

In Sri Lanka, the rubber small holding have been contributing significantly. Their contribution in 2008 had been 71.7 percent of the national production, while Regional Plantation Companies (RPC) was 26 percent. Five years ago, it had been 65 percent by the smallholders and 35 percent by the RPCs. Despite several constraints, the smallholder sector has been demonstrating an increasing trend in performance with an increase of 16 percent over their production in 2007, while the RPCs contribution declined by 10 percent in 2008. Sri Lankan smallholdings productivity is in the region of 1,290 kg/ha where as in Malaysia it is around, 1,330 to 1,440 and in Indonesia it is in the range of 1,250 to 1,500 kg/ha.

The empowerment concept

Empowerment is a process by which people, organization and communities gain mastery over issues of concern to them. The various definitions of ‘empowerment’ are generally consistent with empowerment as an intentional ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respects, critical reflection, caring and group participation though which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and control over those resources.

The empowering processes for individuals might include participation in community organization. At the organization level, empowerment might include collective decision-making and shared leadership.

Empowerment at the community level might include collective action to access government and other community resources.

For the empowerment of smallholding farmers at an individual level, there must be an intentional ongoing process of farm production which emphasises the farmer as the center, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring and group participation.

It is said that the empowerment of the smallholder is the empowerment at the individual level of analysis. The concept integrates perceptions of smallholder control, a proactive approach to life, and critical understanding of the socio-political environment.

Psychological

Psychological empowerment is an emphasis on empowerment at the individual level of analysis. It includes learning about controlling agents and acting to influence those agents.

Thus, psychological empowerment includes beliefs that goals can be achieved, awareness about resources and factors that hinder or enhance one’s efforts to achieve those goals and efforts to fulfill the goals.

The components of psychological empowerment involve the intra-personal, inter-personal and behavioral components.

The intra-personal component refers to having people (i.e. farmers) thinking about themselves and includes domain-specific perceived control, domain-specific self-sufficiency, motivation control and perceived competence.

Domain-specific perceived control refers to beliefs about one’s ability to exert influence in different life spheres such as in farm, family, work or the sociopolitical context.

The inter-personal component refers to the understanding people have about their community and their environment.


A rubber plant nursery

It involves critical awareness of their environment and an understanding of causal agents in decision-making, problem solving and leadership skills. These skills help persons become independent and enable them to control events in their lives.

The behavioural component refers to actions taken to directly influence outcomes. It includes mutual help groups, seeking employment and living independently. The behavioral component may also include behaviours to manage stress or adapt to change.

In plantation agriculture, the psychological empowerment of farmer might include educational experience, occupational experience, adjustments for better efficiency and production, (intra-personal components), communication skills such as individual contacts, information exposure, agricultural knowledge and skills in practice and management, increased accessibility to sources of information, better understanding of the causes of their expenses and incomes, smallholders’ decision-making processes (interpersonal components) and participation through group activities (behavioral component).

These components comprise the psychological empowerment of rubber smallholders, which will influence the achievement of farm goals and objectives toward the sustainability of farm production and income in the future.

Educational

It was found that the average length of formal schooling of smallholders was 9.2 years; 40.9 percent of total smallholders completed preliminary school(5-7years), while 1.8 percent of total smallholders completed above secondary school(>14 years).

The educational experience has an effect on the participation in local rubber smallholders’ groups in the community, and the accessibility to government services and the sources of information in community.

Occupational

The occupational experience was defined as the number of years working at this occupation. The average number of years in this occupation of smallholders was 20.3 years, with 44.9 percent of smallholders having worked in rubber from ten to twenty years.

The relatively high experience of smallholders at working in their occupation also has an effect the adjustment of smallholders to new or changing farm production system.

The more the smallholders have experience, the better are their decisions concerning the process of farm management, skill, knowledge and attitude in their occupation.

The occupational experience as a tool of the empowerment of smallholders is important to develop and increase the strength and capacity of smallholders in such things as the decision making process for decreasing risk management, and increasing smallholders learning processes such as skill, knowledge and attitude in production system .

Efficiency and production

Physical Smallholders need to adjust the physical components in issues of (1) improving and providing the required resources and management for their farm production activities, (2) improving soil fertility, and (3) correlated enhancement and feasibility studies and research to improve the farming system and management and soil fertility for specific crops.

Specific suggestions for physical adjustments needed would be: (1) using manure and growing cover crops to improve soil fertility while trying to decrease chemical usage in disease and pest control and fertilizer, (2) research towards setting a directed plan and implementation strategy, and (3) looking for possible sources of natural water in the community and plan for water resource management.

Biological: The need for using high-yielding clones is an important adjustment to be made. Smallholders normally use any clone that is readily available to them at the time of planting. Thus suggestions for improvement would include (1) providing high yielding clones that are appropriate for specific areas, and (2) improving knowledge of clone selection through training courses.

Social: Improving and strengthening local farmers’ groups is a major requirement to help smallholders adjust to new circumstances. Advances gained through such groups can be measured, such as the bargaining price in local market, the participation through group activity, opportunity to participate in co-decision making, solving problem and shared idea.

Suggested activities to improve social adjustment needs: (1) learning about group management through training courses, and (2) enhancement of the local farmers’ group management in agribusiness.

Economic: A local capital fund for investment and an efficient local marketing system are economic adjustment needs, due to the fluctuating produce price and low quality of product that affects the farm income. Traditionally also, smallholders have been getting an unfair price in local markets. Suggestions for improvement include: (1) establishing a local capital fund for investment through local farmers’ groups, perhaps by a tax on production, and (2) a price insurance system, and (3) providing current information to smallholders.

Changes

It has been reported the majority of smallholders respond only to a small level of change to improve their efficiency and production.

There are limiting factors such as low educational experience that affects their adoption of new technologies and innovations, and also that affects their perception and understanding of agricultural knowledge, and low capital for investment that affects enlargement of the farm operation. Nevertheless, smallholders in rubber-monoculture system may require a high level of adjustment.

This system provides income from only rubber, and it is insufficient for the family for a decent living. They should therefore try to improve their production efficiency by bringing-in professionalism in their approach.

Individual contacts

When smallholders have more opportunity to exchange knowledge and to share ideas with extension/advisory officers, they have more empowerment in improving farm efficiency and productivity.

But this does not happen. They are faced with the constraints of insufficient extension personnel in their area, inefficient extension system in their area and also, inability to contact the extension that effects the communication between extension and smallholders.

But smallholders in rubber-intercrop systems are compelled to have a greater level of individual contact, because production systems of this type need more information and input factors such as fertilizers, planting materials etc.

Knowledge and skills

Knowledge and skills are a prime requirement for farm efficiency and productivity.

The influence of the learning system is important because it affects the achievements of the farm operation and also affects the decision making process of smallholders in farm management.

In integrated farming systems, it was found that smallholders had a fairly high level of knowledge and skills, because this system has a range of production activities. They are therefore compelled to search for new practices and management systems to improve the farm operation at all times.

Smallholders in rubber-monoculture system had a very low level of knowledge and skill in practice and management. Because in this system, they continue with the out-dated knowledge and skills they learnt from their parents, thus they feel it is not necessary to receive additional knowledge from the government agencies.

They also have a low educational level that affects the rate of adoption and diffusion of innovative technology.

Sources of information

Extension agents and television are the main sources of information that smallholders can access in community. Although most smallholders have television and get information mainly from television, they have little interest in agricultural programs.

They normally get information from extension agents, but when this system is inefficient, it dampen the enthusiasm of the smallholders to learn.

Behaviour component

The behaviour component of smallholders’ empowerment is described in terms of smallholders’ participation through local farmers’ groups such as rubber sheet-making groups and rubber latex group.

Participation is a process which enables smallholders to organize themselves, to identify needs, and to share in the development and evaluation of activities as well as in the benefit from them. Without adequate powers, smallholders can not make effective decisions.

In addition, organization is a fundamental instrument of participation. If unorganized smallholders will be unable to build up a power base from which they can influence and claim benefits for their community.

Organization is, thus, closely linked to empowerment.

They, normally, participate in some group activities such as group meetings, and express and share ideas, but they do not participate in setting plans and implementation strategies, co-decision making or solving problems.

It is likely that the improvement of farm household income for farm sustainability can be accomplished through (1) enhancement of the smallholders’ participation through local smallholders’ group activity, and also, (2) providing appropriate training to enhance their knowledge, attitude and skills in agricultural practices and management strategies, and (3) using the optimum levels of inputs and decreasing chemical fertilizer usage, a costly input.

Conclusion

Although rubber smallholders have a low level of primary schooling, they have significant occupational experience that influences their empowerment in decision-making process in farm management and decreasing management risk.

In addition, the adjustment needs indicate that smallholders can understand and evaluate the current situation.

But presently, they exhibit very little empowerment strategy, because they are faced with many constraints such as, ineffective government plans and policy implications, low level of individual contact with extension/advisory agencies, low information exposure, low knowledge and skills in agricultural practices and management stretegies, low accessibility to sources of information, low level of income/expenditure management, and low level of group participation.

It is therefore imperative that we attempt to identify and develop the smallholders’ individual potential as well as their deficiencies as the first priority in the development process of this community.

Thus, the enhancement of group activity and smallholders’ participation therein appears to be the starting point in their self-development, in the absence of any organized governmental agency support which had not been readily made available whenever the need arises.

The existing cooperative systems should be strengthened.

Rubber based farming systems based on cropping pattern and cultural practices which have been developed in response to the ecological, economic and socio-institutional conditions of different locations appears to be the most beneficial for Sri Lankan smallholders.

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