Indonesia Plans to Replant 300,000 Hectares of Rubber Trees

Indonesia, the second-largest rubber producer after Thailand, plans to replant about 9 percent of the crop-area next year to help boost yields at aging plantations, an agriculture ministry official said.

Old and low-yielding trees spread across 300,000 hectares (741,316 acres) would be replaced with new ones, said Rismansyah Danasaputra, the ministry’s director of perennial crops. Rubber plantations cover a total of 3.2 million hectares of the Southeast Asian country, he said.

The plan is “not final yet,” Danasaputra said by phone from Jakarta today. “It’s based on proposals from local administrations because many trees in their regions are not productive anymore.”

Output in Indonesia may drop 9.7 percent to 2.8 million metric tons this year, as farmers reduced tapping because of wintering and as prices slumped, Asril Sutan Amir, chairman of the Rubber Association of Indonesia, said June 22. Rubber, used in tires and gloves, has plunged about 12 percent this year economic growth slowed in China, the biggest consumer.