Madam Mulbah-Siaway said rubber farmers especially smallholders make up the majority of the rubber producers, adding that farmers have been earning their livelihood from rubber farming, but the declining price of natural rubber has affected many of these farmers to the point of forcing some to shut down. She attributed the massive progress in the Ivoirian’s rubber industry to value chain addition to their natural rubber production, stressing the need for Liberian farmers to imitate such. The RPAL’s president noted that one of the ways to add value to rubber is the building of processing plants to purify natural rubber, thus adding more value to rubber production in Liberia. “To Liberian farmers and rubber producers, we can’t stay here and just be planting and just depended on how mush Firestone is going to pay us for a pound. The Rubber Planters Association of Liberia (RPAL), Inc. is a private not-for-profit entity established in 1966 by an Act of the Liberian Legislature.

Source: Front Page Africa February 06, 2020 08:00 UTC