Kirana Megatara Collaborates with Goodyear and Looks to Bring Back Rubber Day Event To Increase Rubber Productivity of Farmers
The Kirana Megatara Group looks to reintroduce its Rubber-Day Events as part of the group’s overall community engagement efforts, after a three-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. First launched in 2014, the event’s main objective then was to reinforce the importance to adopt and adhere to good agriculture practices to make sustained improvements in the productivity of rubber farmers. The uniqueness of such events where educational messages were packaged as entertaining contests attracted several of Kirana’s tiremaker customers to participate as major sponsors. The events have since been organized as joint CSR projects to promote Kirana and the tiremakers’ common mission of achieving sustainable natural rubber.
Kirana Megatara is keen to once again prioritize the event with the diminishing threat of the pandemic and is said to be open to collaboration with any tiremaker buyers for Rubber Day events in the near future.
Last hosted in December of 2019 in Jambi, Indonesia, with the assistance of Goodyear, the event consisted of competitions, a replanting program, the distribution of fertilizers, and an extended presentation among KMG members, Goodyear invitees, farmer group partners, and the local community.
The competitions—the highlight of the event—combined fun and competitiveness with valuable lessons reemphasizing the good agricultural practices (GAP) to the partnered farmers and their community.
The Tapping Competition opened the games, testing the contestants' ability to apply the proper rubber tapping techniques efficiently. After each contestant completed tapping three rubber trees, the jury judged their scores on the depth of the cuts, the contestant's tapping method, and their speed.
The GAP Quiz followed with ten groups of three members answering 15 questions, assessing their knowledge of the good agricultural practices for maintaining their rubber plantations. Starting with qualifying rounds, the four highest scoring groups advanced to the Final Round, where the champions were crowned.
The final round of competition, Dry Rubber Content (DRC) Guessing, taught farmers to analyze and sort different grades of rubber accurately. Provided with three types of rubber with differing qualities, the contestants were forced to sort the rubbers from highest to the lowest grade, highest to lowest contaminant level, and mention the coagulant used for each rubber.
Additionally, on this action-packed day, the Replanting Project focused on assisting farmers in replacing unproductive, aged rubber trees with superior, high-yield clonal seedlings, aiming to help raise rubber productivity over a longer term. The initiative also acts as an effort to mitigate deforestation.
The farmers are provided total funding for land clearing, colonel seedlings, tools, etc., and were said to be the most preferred collaborative project from customers. The project successfully distributed 300,000 high-quality seedlings to smallholders and replanted 50 hectares.
Furthermore, due to the "pestalotiopsis" leaf fall disease that attacks rubber plants in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Kirana Megatara Group provided smallholder farmers with fertilizer assistance for a total area of 100 hectares—fertilizers have emerged as the pragmatic solution for farmers to overcome this leaf fall disease.
With the current disease inhibiting the natural rubber production from the trees and causing financial difficulties for the smallholders, Kirana chose to extend the "Rubber Day" event program. The program incorporated an additional presentation, providing knowledge to the farmers about good rubber cultivation practices and especially leaf fall disease management.
Today, the leaf disease continues to wreak havoc in Sumatran rubber plantations.
"It's been tough coping with the leaf fall disease these past few years. We've lost so much in terms of production, and it has affected our incomes. We hope that soon Kirana will help us with their fertilizer programs like they've done in the past," said a member of the Sumber Rezeki farmer group in Jambi, Indonesia.
Finally, the event often engages in a Scholarship program, providing educational fees to the children of smallholders. The objective focuses on minimizing costs for the partnered rubber farmers, who often list education as their second highest living cost.
"The Rubber Day event has brought out Kirana's visibility to the community with a strong message of care for their well-being. This also makes the company stand out as others in the industry only care for rubber dealers or traders and have no direct interaction with smallholder communities as the actual rubber producers. The pandemic has kept the company from continuing such large gatherings. However, recently we have just started again as the pandemic threat has significantly diminished," stated Kirana Megatara's Chief Sustainability Officer, Mr. Widyantoko Sumarlin.
The Kirana Megatara Group is confident in the return of such a significant event for themselves, the smallholders, and the farmers' community.