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The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) is organising the 12th edition of its annual rubber conference on October 7. The Government of Indonesia is hosting the conference in Yogyakarta.
Focused on the theme “Adaptive and Inclusive Path to Sustainable Value Chain”, the conference will have talks, panel discussions by key policymakers of natural rubber sector in the 13 ANRPC member countries which are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, India, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea and Singapore
The smallholder-dominated natural rubber production sector has limitations to adopt the sustainability norms for rubber which are initiated and largely set by the auto-tyre manufacturing industry. The additional cost to adopt the prescribed practices, the cost to maintain the standards, and the abnormally high fee for the certification, make it practically difficult for the resource-poor smallholders to be on board when the world rubber industry is moving towards a sustainable value-chain.
The sustainable development of any value-chain inevitably requires inclusiveness of its weakest link which is the smallholdings sector in the case of rubber value-chain. Around 90 per cent of the world supply of NR comes from the smallholdings sector. The inclusiveness of the resource-poor smallholders in the sustainability initiative may be possible only if the prescribed standards as well as the certification system are adaptable to them, a statement issued here said.
The conference attempts to identify the standards and norms which are suitable for the smallholdings to adopt as well as acceptable to other segments of the industry’s value-chain.
The event is expected to have about 350 participants from around 20 countries, representing farmers, farmer cooperatives, processors, traders, end-users, policymakers, researchers, rubber associations, investment banks, hedge funds.
The 42nd session of the ANRPC Assembly, the fifth ANRPC Public-Private Meet, and the meetings of the Executive Committee, Information & Statistics Committee (ISC), and the Industry Matters Committee (IMC) will be held at the same venue from October 8 to 12 .
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