Chapter 601 Prospects and Crisis of Rubber Plantation Industry
"The development road of the automobile industry is long. We in East Africa are now just at the stage of copying others. The only major advantageous parts that can be exported may be tires!" Ernst sighed.
The so-called tires are rubber tires. Germany and Austria both rely on imports for rubber, so the production and processing of rubber is one of East Africa's core industries, just like sisal. However, sisal also has other production areas in the world, but East Africa is the most suitable place for sisal growth.
The rubber processing industry in East Africa has only been in operation for a few years, but East Africa or the Hexingen Consortium is the patent owner of hollow pneumatic tires. Moreover, East Africa’s biggest advantage now is that most of the rubber production is monopolized by East Africa. This is the result of Ernst’s early layout.
It will take time for South American countries to react, after all, expanding production and building new plantations require a lot of energy and time.
In fact, it was only after East African rubber could be exported on a large scale that the rubber producing areas of South America, especially Brazil, discovered East Africa's big moves. Because East Africa had concealed it too well before, they were caught off guard.
This is one of the effects of East Africa's policy of isolation. East Africa's rubber producing areas are almost all inland. Even the nearest coastal plain producing areas are two or three hundred kilometers away from the Indian Ocean. Other countries cannot enter East Africa for investigation. Therefore, before the first batch of rubber was exported from East Africa, no one knew that East Africa had surpassed Brazil to become the world's largest rubber growing country.
The Brazilian government did not react much to this incident, because just a few years after East Africa secretly introduced rubber trees, the British replicated East Africa's behavior, and now Southeast Asia is also conducting small-scale trials.
The British acted aboveboard, and when the British were experimenting with rubber planting in East Africa, the first rubber producing area in East Africa, the Great Lakes region, was already ready for harvesting. In addition, several other rubber producing areas in East Africa had also been developed, including the largest rubber producing area, the Hesse plantation area (the tropical rainforest plantation area on the western foot of the Mitumba Mountains).
Brazil naturally did not dare to blame Britain, but it was very depressed that East Africa "suddenly" became the largest exporter of rubber. Brazil's supervision of rubber was not strict before. After all, the Brazilian government inherited from Portugal, with low administrative efficiency and serious corruption within the government. Under such national conditions, it was impossible for Brazil to block the export of rubber.
And there is no need for it now. Rubber has been planted in East Africa and Southeast Asia. East Africa is even more excessive. It has quietly replaced Brazil to become the world's largest rubber producer. Now the Brazilian government cannot even block it even if it wants to.
The only thing they can do is to expand the planting area and compete with East Africa. In the future, they will have to compete with Southeast Asia. It can be said that their fate is full of misfortunes.
And even if the Brazilian government wants to do something now, it can probably only survive for another 20 years, because if nothing unexpected happens, the rubber planting industry in South America will be wiped out in the future.
Ernst knew that in the early 20th century, the entire rubber production industry in South America would collapse due to rubber leaf blight, and the market share would drop from more than 90% to less than 1%.
Brazil's rubber planting industry is not so depressed now. Although East Africa has occupied most of the market, it can still maintain about 15%.
Because Brazil previously dominated the rubber industry, there was not much motivation to expand production because it could just wait for the price to rise. At the same time, rubber plantations in East Africa were tightly controlled, so Brazil was caught off guard and was defeated by the rubber plantations in East Africa.
This is also related to the population gap between the two countries. East Africa now has a population of more than 50 million (including blacks), and there were also a large number of blacks for East Africa to use before. East Africa has consumed at least tens of millions of blacks over the years. There were tens of millions of black people in the eastern region alone.
The total population of Brazil is only over 10 million, so there is a large amount of cheap labor available in East Africa, but Brazil is not so lucky. However, Brazil is better off than in the same period of previous history.
In Brazil's previous life, the abolition movement was in 1888. In this life, it is unknown when Brazil will push forward this reform, but because of the expansion of East Africa's "labor" export business, Brazil has become a beneficiary and is the largest recipient of blacks from East Africa in the Americas.
Although the United States is rich, it has to hide its affairs. The black "workers" in East Africa still need to transit through third-party countries such as Haiti, while East Africa can directly send the black "workers" to Rio de Janeiro.
So East Africa actually imported a large amount of cheap labor to Brazil, especially after the number of immigrants from East Africa itself decreased and the original immigrant ships were used to develop business in the Americas. As for Argentina, like East Africa, it is not interested in black people.
In response to rubber leaf blight, the only preparation East Africa can make is to collect wild rubber tree species from South America in advance as a genetic reserve for rubber tree species.
In the past, rubber leaf blight was very severe, and even the wild rubber species in Brazil were not spared, but Ernst believed that these wild rubber tree species must be of great use.
So East Africa basically completed this task within a few years after the first batch of rubber seeds were introduced, unless there are still undiscovered tree species deep in the Amazon rainforest.
The specific time period for the outbreak of rubber leaf blight in South America in the past should be 1905. Of course, this is only the first time there was a written record, so the rubber leaf blight should have appeared around 1900.
But it couldn't have been earlier, for example, the rubber tree species in Southeast Asia also came from South America, but they survived.
Rubber leaf blight is as destructive to the rubber industry as banana wilt is to Gros Michel bananas. There is no good treatment, and the only solution is geographical isolation.
Therefore, several rubber producing areas in East Africa and many banana producing areas in East Africa will be directly isolated from South America in the future.
The Gros Michel banana has become extinct on a large scale, and there is the Sinba mandshurica as a substitute. However, it is not so easy to find a substitute for the rubber tree. The simplest approach is to wait until the future for genetic modification or to use synthetic rubber.
As for genetic modification, what East Africa can do is to preserve more wild rubber tree varieties to prevent other rubber tree varieties from being wiped out in the future along with the Brazilian rubber planting industry.
East Africa must also be prepared to prevent the tragedy of Brazil's rubber plantation industry from happening in East Africa. Regarding this, Ernst plans to manage the four major rubber producing areas in East Africa separately in the next 20 years without directly interfering with each other.
Just like in the past, the Thai government banned aircraft from directly entering areas affected by South American rubber leaf blight to ensure the safety of Thailand's rubber planting industry.
East Africa must not only cut off contact between domestic rubber-growing producing areas and South America, but also cut direct contact between the four major producing areas in the country.
The four major rubber producing areas in East Africa, according to the size of planting, are: Hesse Province, Great Lakes Region, Lake Turkana (southern Ethiopian Plateau), and Eastern Coastal Plains.
These production areas are not directly adjacent to each other and are separated by long distances, making it convenient for East Africa to put its "eggs" in different baskets.
In addition, East Africa's banana planting industry also needs to take relevant measures. Banana wilt is also a big problem, so Ernst hopes that the Gross Michel banana can survive in East Africa until the 21st century.
(End of this chapter)
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