The All-Karnataka Rubber Planters’ Association has said that rubber growers in the State are in distress due to crash in the prices of the commodity.
Addressing presspersons in Mangaluru on Wednesday, N Sharath Bhandary, president of the association, said that the prices of natural rubber have come down from ₹220 a kg in 2012 to ₹110 a kg in September.
One of the main reasons for this is the import of rubber, he said. The landing cost of a kg of rubber from Bangkok works out to nearly ₹115 a kg, after accounting for import duty of 25 per cent, insurance and freight charges.
As a result of the price crash, tapping of rubber from trees and replanting of rubber plants have come down in the state, he said.
P Gopalakrishna Bhat, secretary of the association, said that around 2 lakh hectares of land is available for expansion in Karnataka. Of this, around 55,000 growers in the State have ventured into rubber cultivation on an area of around 50,000 hectares of land. They produce around 40,000 tonnes of natural rubber a year.
With the crash in the prices of natural rubber, tapping of rubber from trees has come down by almost 40 per cent during the year.
While the re-planting in old rubber plantations has been stopped now, expansion of rubber crop in new areas has also come down drastically. All these years, around 2,000 hectares of new rubber plantations were added in Karnataka on an annual basis, he said.
Karnataka grows rubber in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Chikmagaluru, Shimoga and Kodagu districts.
Bhat suggested that the Government increase the import duty of natural rubber from 25 per cent to 50 per cent to help farmers in the country.
Bhandary said that a seminar of rubber growers in Karnataka will be held at Puttur in Dakshina Kannada district on September 11 to discuss and mitigate the problems of the growers in the State.