Rich rewards for rubber? Research in Indonesia is exploring how smallholders can increase rubber production, retain biodiversity and provide additional environmental benefits

Like most farmers in the Indonesian province of Jambi, Abdul Roni used to make a meagre living from his rubber gardens, just enough to keep his family in clothes and food, but not enough to pay for the children’s education or much else. However, his life began to change for the better when scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre encouraged him to replace some of his low-yielding ‘jungle rubber’ gardens with a different form of rubber agroforestry. “I changed the way I manage my land,” he says. “In 1996, I cleared the jungle rubber, planted high-yielding clonal varieties and learned how to space my trees, weed between the rows and control disease. I also started to use fertilizer, something I’d never done in the past.” Five years later, he began to tap his young rubber trees, and today his yields are three times higher than they were before. He has also planted timber trees among the rubber and these will provide wood to build homes for his children.

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