Kirana Megatara Promotes Good Agriculture Practices through Competitions

One of the long-standing sustainability issues for natural rubber in Indonesia is the suboptimal quality of rubber produced by smallholder communities.  This is mainly due to lack of proper knowledge for good tree maintenance combined with improper post harvest handling.  The latter is exemplified by the widespread practice of “padding” unnecessary extra weight with various contaminants or water expecting greater revenue than selling pure coagulated rubber.

A recent innovative project by PT Kirana Megatara under its hallmark Smallholder Partnership Program, is to address the above issues by holding competiton events in the local rubber communities.    Participants of such event are not confined only to Kirana’s established smallholder group partners, but also any willing smallholders residing in the greater districts.   The purpose is to impart knowledge of good agriculture pracitices (GAP) onto the minds of the participants yet in an subconcious entertaining way.

This approach has been found to be successful judging by the large turnouts from families of rubber smallholders and by the enthusiastic overtly support from local governments.  

The competition is mainly consists of three parts.  First is a quiz show on various aspects of GAP ranging from the agronomy, the type of input materials, and other do’s and don’ts in rubber cultivation and maintenance.  This is run much like any ordinary quiz show seen on tv programs adapted to an outdoor setting. 

The second part is a tapping competition.  While participants compete on the basis of efficiency yet the overall score takes into account proper techniques that least damage the tree.  Here the underlying message is obvious: the right technique would preserve the tree the longest while still obtaining the optimal amount of latex.

The final part is arguably the most important aspect for any smallholder: guessing the quality of rubber blocks from real samples of Kirana’s purchase lot.  Participants are asked to guess the portion of dry rubber in each sample – widely known as the DRC for dry-rubber content.  This is the real valuation done by any rubber processor.  A trained purchase officer can make the valuation by visual means and sometimes later confirmed by laboratory process.  Such process is not normally encountered by a smallholder since an intermediary trader would trade in terms of total weight and not in DRC terms.

Kirana has conducted such events a few times a year rotating from one rubber producing region to another.  With the kind of positive response from the communites and local governments thus far, the project has now become an integral part of the overall corporate sustainability program.

Cover photo: @Kirana Megatara