Abstract
Rubber cultivation in Sri Lanka is in the expansion process to drier non-traditional areas to cater the demand. Having sufficient lands and then with additional objective of improving rural livelihood, Eastern and Northern region of Sri Lanka has been targeted for this expansion. With the initial success in the intermediate zone of Eastern province, rubber was introduced to the dry zone in Vavuniya district for the first time in 2010. However, no information was available on its potential expansion and factors to be considered. Therefore, this study was aimed to address this need through a detailed analysis on Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) for rubber cultivation in Vavuniya. Collection of secondary data and farmer workshops for SWOT analyses were tools of the study. Despite the availability of lands, farmers in Vavuniya - North had limited access to lands. Prospective stability in income was the opportunity expected by farmers from rubber cultivation. As a realistic target; cultivating 4,000 ha of rubber in Vavuniya district is proposed with the concept of “one family one hectare of rubber”. Factors to be considered in allocating lands for rubber, a protocol for its expansion and needs for future studies are also discussed.
Highlights
Introduction the demand for natural rubber based products is increasing, urbanization and industrialization prevent the expansion of rubber cultivation further in the traditional rubber growing wet zone (WZ)
Material and Methods The study confined to Vavuniya district to where rubber was firstly introduced in the Northern Province and comprised two approaches, i.e. gathering information from secondary data available for this region and, undertaking a farmer participatory rural appraisal (PRA) on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis) for rubber cultivation in the area
At the beginning of the workshop, general information useful to assess the potential for rubber cultivation such as livelihood strategies and income levels, number of family members, land availability, crops cultivated, soil water availability and social organizations was collected in group wise
Summary
The demand for natural rubber based products is increasing, urbanization and industrialization prevent the expansion of rubber cultivation further in the traditional rubber growing wet zone (WZ). The government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has decided to expand rubber cultivation to drier nontraditional areas In particular for this exercise, East and North regions of the country have been focused because their land per capita is reasonably higher, and the livelihood of the people who were entangled in 30 year war, has to be upgraded. In this process, rubber was initially grown in the Intermediate Zone (IZ) of Eastern province and found successful in terms of both agronomic (Iqbal et al, 2010) and social aspects (Rodrigo et al, 2009, 2011a). The present study was aimed to do so with analyses on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for rubber cultivation in Vavuniya district
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