The National Rubber Producers, Processors and Marketing Association of Nigeria (NARPPMAN) has disclosed that rubber is becoming the most sought-after agro produce in the world, while admonishing governments and individual to invest more in its plantations.
The NARPPMAN chairman, Oluwatosin Jeremiah, made this call at a sensitization workshop organized by the stakeholders of the association, adding that investment in the rubber plantation will enhance social-economic development and ensure the stability of the ecosystem, among others.
Rubber, as a globally traded agricultural commodity in high demand, plays a significant role as a forex earner and a major contributor to national economic growth.
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Natural rubber is a strategic material due to its exceptional elasticity, resilience, flexibility at low temperatures, resistance to abrasion, insulating properties, and ability to disperse heat.
Jeremiah revealed that individuals who invested in rubber plantations would continue to make profit continuously till old age, because investment in rubber business has a life span of 65 years and that it is harvested every time except in March at the height of the dry season.
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According to him, rubber has about 40 major products and over 5,000 by-products and is used in the manufacture of various items, ranging from household materials to industrial production of shoes, chairs, tables, tires etc.
“The cultivation of natural rubber on commercial scales presents a wide range of economic benefits, such as gainful employment opportunities (reducing criminality in the process), the establishment of small and medium-scale enterprises and more tax to the government, among other benefits.”
He enumerated that finance, process of getting land, planting and commercial processing had usually been the challenges faced by the body, he then called on the government to empower the youth and farmers on massive cultivation of rubber plantations to encourage mass rubber plantations.
