Rubber and oil-palm production and value addition in Asia: relevance for Africa

• The historical development of supply and value chains of rubber and oil palm in Asia suggests that the elasticity of family-farm labour has an advantage in the political economy of scale

• Rubber can be grown as part of highly diverse agroforests, oil palm mostly (so far) in regularly spaced monocultures, but double-row intercropped systems deserve attention

• In rubber the main production costs is labour for tapping that can be shifted elsewhere if farmgate prices are not attractive; oil palm requires higher investment and continued input use to maintain productivity; there are portfolio advantages in maintaining a foot in each door, reducing risk at farm, landscape and national economy scale

• External concerns in global markets over social and ecological consequences of expansion have led to certification standards in oil palm, but hardly yet in rubber; as prevention of reputational damage is more cost-effective than cure, transparency is needed

• Lessons for Africa include that it may be attractive for local governments to start ‘development’ by creating cheap access to land and (externally recruited) labour in an emerging vertically linked plantation industry, but for longer term positive development impacts an evolution to a smallholder dominated sector must be foreseen and facilitated without single-buyer dominance.