According to the Steering Committee for the Central Highlands Region, the provinces have banned the transformation of natural forests into plantations since 2016.
The Central Highlands provinces now houses nearly 251,350 ha of rubber trees
Instead, the localities will pay more attention to the intensive farming of rubber plantation areas to increase productivity.
Statistics show that the Central Highlands provinces now houses nearly 251,350 ha of rubber trees, accounting for around 25% of the country’s total rubber area. Last year, the region collected more than 200,000 tonnes of rubber latex in 2016 with Gia Lai and Kon Tum recording the highest amount.
Under the government’s plan, the country's total area of rubber plantation will reach around 800,000 hectares by 2020; however, the figure topped more than one million by late April of 2016. This encouraged farmers to rush to grow more rubber, leading to the sharp prices of latex. So, many destroyed their rubber trees to grow other crops such as pepper.
Many enterprises which grow rubber also are affected by poor technical knowledge and labour shortages. This has resulted in the weak development of many rubber farms in Gia Lai and Dak Lak. Farmers are now instead concentrating on improving results from existing plantations.
To date, up to 220 projects turning exhausted forests or forestry land into rubber farms have been implemented in the Central Highlands region.
However, such projects have failed to yield good results.
Vietnam is the world’s third largest rubber producer after Thailand and Indonesia.
