VietNamNet Bridge – The rubber growing area in Vietnam has far exceeded the rubber plantation development program. While the socio-economic effects of the plants called as “white gold” remain unclear, thousands of hectares of natural forests have fallen down.

The report which has been released by Forest Trends and Tropenbos International Vietnam, the two non-government organizations, showed the massive development of rubber plants in the country, especially in the Central Highlands.

To date, 227 rubber growing projects in the Central Highlands have been licensed. On average, each of the projects takes 511 hectares of land, including 402 hectares of natural forests.

The government’s rubber development plan by 2020 said that 56 percent of land area needed for the plan implementation would be taken from the poor forests.

However, a report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) showed that the real proportion has reached 79 percent, and that not all of the forests are the poor forests. Nearly 400,000 cubic meters of wood have been exploited when shifting the natural forests into the rubber growing area.

Forest Trends believe that the actual volume of wood exploited is much higher. It has also pointed out that the rubber growing area expansion has damaged the natural resources and the biodiversity. Scientists believe that natural forests have the carbon absorption and storage capability much higher than rubber forests.

Rubber has been grown in a large scale in the northwest – the area which does not prioritize the rubber development – as well. The land for rubber growing has been taken from cultivated fields or the land for forestry product development.

As a result, farmers have lost land for cultivation, faced the food security problems. Especially, lacking land for agriculture production, local people have been deforesting to get land.

Meanwhile, the weather and the soil in the northwest are not suitable to the rubber growing. The death of a series of young plants in the northwest and northeast in 2008-2009, once again, raised doubts about the economic efficiency of the rubber growing in the area.

However, MARD still has proposed to increase the rubber growing area in the northwest to 100,000 hectares instead of 50,000 hectares as approved by the government in 2009.

Under the government’s development plan, Vietnam would have 800,000 hectares of rubber by 2020, including the 280,000 hectares in the Central Highlands and 50,000 hectares in the northwest.

However, the actual rubber growing area by 2012 had reached 915,000 hectares, much higher than the 800,000 hectare target set for 2020.

The latest report by MARD showed that the total rubber growing area in three provinces of Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Son La alone has reached 20,000 hectares, while they plan to have 57,500 hectares by 2020.

Will rubber plants bring gold?

According to FPT Securities Company, more than 80 percent of the rubber latex has been exported, mostly to China, which consumes 40 percent of the exports. Only 20 percent of the rubber output has been consumed domestically.

In 2012, Vietnam exported more than 1 million tons, worth $2.8 billion.

However, the supply in the world has exceeded the demand. Meanwhile, the rubber growing area in South East Asia still has been increasing. The latex export price in the first months of 2013 plummeted by 50 percent from 2012, thus making rubber growers take loss.

Mai Thanh