Rubber dub dub

Nicholas Farrelly - 01 Sep, 2006

In southern Thailand, the rubber price back in 2000 hovered around 20 baht a kilo. It is now up over 70 baht. Recent high prices have seen rubber sometimes leap over the mystical 100 baht barrier. This makes for lots of happy plantation owners, and well-remunerated armies of tappers, throughout the rubber producing provinces.

Each sheet of rubber in this picture is worth at least 70 baht. The plantation in question is making a profit of almost 80,000 baht per month. Good money – in an area that only 30 years ago was riven by insurgency and strife. Times change, and now the money flows.

About the Author
Nicholas Farrelly
Dr Nicholas Farrelly is the co-founder of New Mandala. A graduate of the Australian National University and the University of Oxford, over the past 20 years he has undertaken research in Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and India. Nicholas is Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania and formerly the Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, where he also led the ANU Myanmar Research Centre from 2015 to 2017.
New Mandala is supported by the Australian National University (ANU), a world-leading centre of research and teaching on Southeast Asia that has hosted the site since its founding in 2006. New Mandala's editors make editorial decisions independently of the ANU, and the views expressed at New Mandala are solely those of contributors and do not represent the institutional position(s) of the ANU or any of its constituent parts.
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