Journal of Agricultural Research (2020), Volume. 7, Issue (2)

Abstract

Rubber is one of the major industrial crops in Myanmar and the total planting area has about 0.65 million hectares and employed about 400,000 workers. The rubber industry also has huge market demand for natural rubber from neighboring countries. Consequently, the rubber plantation area, tapping area and yield per unit area had been increased dramatically. As the study areas, five townships were selected from Mon State, Tanintharyi and Bago Regions, major traditional rubber plantation areas in Myanmar. Types of the data collection were interviewing 75 rubber farmers with different farm sizes and 9 focus group discussions with key stakeholders. To investigate critical intervention areas in the rubber industry, SWOT analysis was conducted from October 2018 to February 2019. In the production sector, critical intervention areas were land tenure system, quality control of rubber seedling, research for yield improvement, and capacity building. Critical intervention areas for the processing sector were encouraging establishment of rubber factories, quality control, and capacity building program while creating the international market demand and providing reliable market information were important interventions in the marketing sector. Regarding the critical areas above, alternatives policies for sustainable development would be suggested as (1) rubber industry land tenure policy (2) quality control policy (3) research and development policy (4) human resource development policy and (5) database and market information service policy for creating for international demand.