Misconceptions about Rubber Harvesting

Harvesting rubber is a tricky business. You can never do realistic estimates going by average daily yeild by acre (0.40 hectare). That is one mistake we did when we bought the land. There are so many factors affecting on the daily yeild; the age of the plantation, size of the tree trunks, fertility of land, way of tapping and period of tapping. We had no idea that rubber trees need to be tapped continuously to train the trees to produce more latex.

During the period of the land transaction, our plantation was not tapped over nearly three months. When we started tapping in early last May, it was a nightmare. The trees refused to produced latex. It took nearly 10 days of tapping to bring the plantation to a level of decent yield. At the end of May and the first week of June 2011, we had monsoon rains. When we restarted tapping after 14 days, we had to start the production from square one; the yield followed the similar pattern. But this time come back period is shorter than the previous time; it was 6 days of continuous tapping.

When we tap the plantation more and more, I hope that we will be getting a decent harvest close to an average daily yield of 8 kg per acre. Conservatively we are expecting a daily yield of 5 kgs per acre. Given the size of some trees and length of the period with no fertilizing, we have to expect a modest yield from our plantation.

Our trees had been tapped so badly over last five years. The trees were damaged and neglected. The trees were not fertilized nearly 7 years. What can we expect from  such a plantation at our early stage of tapping? Isn't it give and take business? We need to take care of our plantation, before we expect something in return.