Cheap rubber hurts farmers, "a glass of rubber water is not as expensive as a bottle of mineral water"
The consumption of natural rubber in my country accounts for about 40% of the world, but the long-term cost of domestic rubber is upside down, the rubber plantation abandons and the rubber workers are lost
Our reporter Luo Jiang and Pu Chao
Since 2011, the price of natural rubber has continued to fall, and there was even a dilemma that "a cup of glue is not as valuable as a bottle of mineral water".
Since last year, the low rubber price has been combined with the impact of the epidemic and drought, and rubber companies and rubber farmers in the main rubber production areas of Hainan and Yunnan have suffered serious losses.
The Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter found that rubber production efficiency is low and the overall cost is high. The long-term cost of domestic rubber is upside down, the rubber plantation is abandoned, the rubber workers are lost, and the natural rubber planting area and output guarantee are facing greater pressure.
Rubber prices continue to fall, rubber farmers are weak in increasing income
In the third team of Banshuai of Yunnan Natural Rubber Industry Group Ximeng Company, rubber worker Zhou Hongwei said goodbye to the upside down tapping work.
His family contracted 89 acres of rubber plantations and earned more than 60,000 yuan from rubber tapping last year.
"The rubber market was good in the past few years, and the income is twice as high as it is now." He said, the price of dry rubber has been falling, from the highest level of 20 yuan per kilogram to 12 yuan, and most of the time last year it fluctuated between 9 yuan and 10 yuan. .
Yunnan and Hainan are the main rubber producing areas in my country, and rubber has a decisive influence on the income of local farmers.
About 8 million mu of rubber are planted in Hainan Province alone, involving more than 2 million farmers.
However, the price of natural rubber has continued to fall from the historical high of 42,000 yuan per ton in 2011, and has hovered around 12,000 yuan in recent years. The low planting efficiency of rubber farmers has been weak in increasing income.
Industry insiders pointed out that from 2005 to 2012, the price of rubber rose, and the main producing countries planted a large number of rubber trees. After the new rubber trees were produced, the global economic growth slowed down and there was an overall oversupply.
At the beginning of last year, the global economy was shut down under the influence of the epidemic, and the industrial chain was unable to form a closed loop of work. The price of natural rubber fell below 10,000 yuan per ton. In the third quarter, the price of rubber fell back to a low level after a brief rise.
On the planting side, Hainan and Yunnan suffered severe drought in the first half of last year.
According to the agricultural situation dispatch of the Yunnan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, as of the end of March last year, the province's rubber drought-affected area was 3.4667 million mu, and the opening was delayed and the output declined.
According to data provided by the Hainan Natural Rubber Industry Group, last year a large number of mature rubber plantations of the company were closed due to drought and the disaster rate was as high as 35.7%.
It was not until July last year that the gum trees in western Hainan generally met the conditions for harvesting, and the harvesting period was delayed by nearly 3 months compared with previous years.
Reporters interviewed some state-owned and private rubber plantations in Changjiang, Baisha and other places in Hainan and found that large areas of rubber trees were dead and there was no glue to harvest.
In the 17 production team of the Red Forest Branch of Haijiao Group, the continued high temperature and drought caused nearly half of the 26,000 rubber trees to die.
The production team started cutting in April last year, but it was unable to produce rubber until the end of September last year.
"I missed half of the eight-month cutting period a year, and missed the high-yield period." The production team leader Li Guangcun said that since January last year, the glue workers have been out of money, and 6 of the 12 glue workers have resigned.
High efficiency and low cost, highlighting the pressure of stable production
Natural rubber is an important industrial raw material and strategic resource. my country's natural rubber consumption accounts for about 40% of the world.
In 2017, my country included natural rubber production areas in the category of important agricultural production protection areas.
Among them, Yunnan and Hainan have designated and constructed 9 million mu and 8.4 million mu respectively.
The reporter visited the two provinces and found that due to the double squeeze of low output efficiency and high cost, the development of the natural rubber industry is struggling, and the planting area and output guarantee are facing greater pressure.
Compared with Southeast Asian countries, the natural conditions of natural rubber planting in my country are inferior.
According to Haijiao Group's survey, the average yield of Hainan rubber is only about 60% of that of the main rubber producing areas in Southeast Asia.
Under climatic restrictions, land resources suitable for planting rubber have become tighter. After more than 60 years of development and construction, Yunnan Land Reclamation has planted nearly 2.2 million mu of natural rubber, and the development of land resources suitable for planting rubber has basically been completed in the reclamation area.
Huang Huasun, director of the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, said that although my country has successfully planted natural rubber trees north of 17 degrees north latitude, the suitable planting area and the scale of development are limited.
The growth and rubber production of rubber trees are affected by low temperature all year round, and they are also facing typhoon disasters.
However, the rubber planting countries in Southeast Asia do not have low temperatures in winter and are less affected by typhoons. Even with the same variety and management level, my country's rubber yield is low.
According to the relevant person in charge of Yunnan Farmland Reclamation, most of the rubber plantation water and soil conservation, forest roads, protection projects and other supporting projects are lagging behind, and the old rubber plantations and low-yield rubber plantations cannot be updated in time.
Hainan is also facing the same problem. According to estimates by the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Thermal Sciences, the area of rubber plantations over 30 years old in the province is nearly 1 million mu, and the low-yield rubber plantations amount to 1.5 million mu.
Private rubber plantations in Hainan and Yunnan are mainly operated by farmers in a decentralized manner, and their cultivation and management techniques are backward and yield lower.
In Liuguiling Village, Beida Town, Wanning City, more than 100 rubber trees planted by poverty-relief household Jiang Chunmei grow short, densely and disorderly, and lack of management and protection. The yield of her rubber plantation is only one-third of the rubber plantation in the reclamation area. Jiao has only 10 yuan income.
At the same time, the cost of domestic natural rubber production remains high.
The reporter learned that the direct production cost of Haijiao Group's natural rubber reached 16,000 yuan per ton; the comprehensive cost of Yunnan Natural Rubber Industry Group's self-produced dry rubber was also as high as 15,000 yuan per ton. Only the labor cost of rubber tapping and rubber gardening has reached About 10,000 yuan per ton.
The price of natural rubber continues to run at a low level and has fallen below the cost for many years.
The cost of labor and land in Southeast Asian countries is significantly lower than that in China. For example, the cost of rubber production in Thailand is about 8,000 yuan per ton. When the price of rubber is low, there is still the power to tap rubber.
The person in charge of the Red Forest Branch of the Haijiao Group pointed out that, for example, the monthly income from rubber tapping is 1,500 yuan, which means that the farmers in Hainan are struggling to live, but in Southeast Asia it has reached the middle and high level of income of farmers.
The low efficiency has led to the abandonment of pipes and cuttings in rubber plantations, and there is greater pressure on the planting area and yield guarantee.
Over the past four years, the number of glue workers in the Honglin Branch of Haijiao Group has decreased from more than 900 to more than 500. The average age of glue workers is close to 50 years old.
The company's 18,000 mu of newly opened rubber tapping plantations, aging rubber plantations, and remote rubber plantations are at risk of being invaded by surrounding farmers to plant other crops due to low efficiency and unmanned rubber tapping.
"Due to the low rubber price, the annual income of rubber workers has dropped by an average of 10,000 yuan per year in the past two years. Many people have given up rubber tapping and went out to work." Zhou Hongwei introduced that his third team of Banshuai had 110 villagers contracting rubber plantations. Only 43 people are still tapping rubber at home.
State-owned rubber plantations are undertaking the task of ensuring supply and cannot be "willed" to stop cutting. The abandonment of private rubber plantations is even more serious.
Around 2012, the Dongxing base branch of Haijiao Group was able to purchase 5,000 tons of dry rubber from the local private rubber plantation each year. In recent years, the purchase volume has been reduced by half.
Wu Yongchun, who invested in a rubber plantation in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, told reporters that he invested 1.5 million yuan to contract 160 acres of rubber plantation in 2010, and the conditions for opening were already available in 2016.
However, due to the low price of rubber and unable to pay the glue workers' wages, it has not yet started.
"The rubber plantation is currently unmanaged, and I can't find a next home if I want to transfer it."
"Make up the chain" and "Strong chain" to improve efficiency and curb losses
Interviewees predict that in a long period of time in the future, natural rubber prices will still be difficult to exceed domestic production costs.
In order to ensure the stable and sustainable development of the industry, it is recommended to increase support for the rubber industry, reduce losses at the planting end, and extend the industrial chain to improve the overall benefits of the industry.
It takes 6 to 8 years from rubber planting to rubber production. During this period, it needs to be continuously invested but without any income.
The grassroots rubber planting farms in Yunnan and Hainan look forward to increasing subsidies during the non-production period of natural rubber, supporting enterprises and farmers to renovate and renovate aging, low-yield rubber plantations and promote improved varieties, and develop understory economies in accordance with local conditions to improve the overall benefits of rubber plantations.
At the same time, explore the inclusion of natural rubber in the scope of public welfare forest compensation and ecological compensation.
In order to solve the problem of abandonment and abandonment of rubber plantations, Hainan and Yunnan have explored and implemented natural rubber price insurance, natural rubber income insurance, and natural rubber "insurance + futures" pilot projects in recent years to compensate for the losses caused by falling prices of rubber planting entities.
Industry insiders suggest that target price insurance can be carried out on this basis, and the target price of insurance should be appropriately set with reference to the complete production cost of natural rubber to cover the cost of planting rubber and the reasonable benefits of planting rubber.
The working environment of rubber tapping is harsh, the time is reversed day and night, and the front-line rubber workers generally suffer from occupational diseases.
In the case of the rapid loss of rubber workers, the grassroots rubber workers called for the rubber workers to be included in the catalog of special types of work and be given retirement benefits for special types of work.
The emergence of new technologies has brought a turning point in solving the problem of "unmanned rubber tapping".
Scientific research institutions and rubber companies have developed intelligent equipment such as electric rubber tapping knives and "one machine, one tree" rubber tapping robots, but the cost is too high to be fully deployed.
Wu Xiaodong, general manager of the Haijiao Group’s corporate development department, said that intelligent rubber tapping equipment can be included in the scope of agricultural machinery subsidies in due course, and an investment fund can be established to support relevant teams in scientific research.
On the basis of reducing losses in the planting process, the rubber industry needs to improve quality and efficiency and extend the industrial chain to get out of the predicament.
The reporter found that the rubber processing industries in Yunnan and Hainan are small, scattered, and chaotic, with large losses.
With an annual output of more than 300,000 tons of natural rubber in Hainan, there are more than 100 processing companies.
Ning Shunliang, secretary of the Party Committee of Yunjiao Group, said that the number of rubber processing plants in Yunnan and the scale of production capacity far exceed the actual output of local rubber. There are frequent phenomena of grabbing raw materials at high prices and selling products at low prices.
"The elimination of outdated production capacity in the initial processing of natural rubber, and the development of high-end rubber products industry may bring opportunities for'curving overtaking'." Xie Shuigui, deputy director of the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, suggested that we should accelerate the elimination of outdated natural rubber processing capacity and renew Formulate environmental protection standards for natural rubber processing, increase the integration of private initial processing plants, and realize a large-scale, standardized, and green processing system.
At present, my country's rubber primary processed products have poor quality consistency and high-performance natural rubber is dependent on imports.
Huang Huasun suggested that a batch of key core technologies and equipment should be innovated, and basic common technologies should be overcome in key areas such as variety improvement, quality control, rubber tapping mechanization and automation, new materials, new rubber products, and speed up the use of natural rubber materials in aviation tires and high-speed rail partitions. Application in high-end products such as shock absorption and submarine sealing ring, and promote the development of downstream products industry.