Source Year: 1996

Small farmers, including those in the large Indonesian smallholder rubber sector, have often been slow to adopt new high-yielding tree crop cultivars, owing partly to plentiful land and the persistent profitability of land-intensive low-yield techniques. Now, however, as land frontiers are reached, investment in high-yielding trees is becoming more desirable but is usually constrained by scarce information and capital. A study was carried out in 1990-93 of small private Indonesian nurseries supplying improved planting material to rubber farmers through an appropriate marketing network. The factors underlying this successful, dynamic and private-profit driven change are examined, including the economic effects on the parties involved. Government policies which might further encourage such change are scrutinized, with special focus on how to provide greater technical and other information to those concerned.