African Entrepreneurship Record-Chapter 614 - 292: Prospects and Crisis in Rubber Plantations

"The development path of the automotive industry is long, and we in East Africa are currently only at the stage of imitation. The only major advantage component we might be able to export is perhaps just the tires!" Ernst lamented.

The so-called tires are rubber tires. Both Germany and Austria rely on imported rubber, so the processing and production of rubber is one of the core industries of East Africa, like sisal. However, sisal has other production regions worldwide, but East Africa is most suitable for sisal growth.

The rubber processing industry in East Africa has just started and hasn’t been around for many years. But East Africa, or rather, the Heixinggen consortium, is the patent owner of hollow pneumatic tires, and the greatest advantage now is that most rubber production is monopolized by East Africa, a result of Ernst’s early strategic planning.

South American countries will need time to respond, as expanding production and building new plantations require a lot of effort and time.

In fact, only when rubber could be massively exported from East Africa did the South American rubber regions, especially Brazil, realize East Africa’s major moves, because East Africa had disguised its intentions too well beforehand and caught Brazil off guard.

This is one of the effects of East Africa’s isolationist policy. The rubber regions in East Africa are mostly inland, with even the nearest coastal plain areas being two to three hundred kilometers from the Indian Ocean. Other countries cannot enter East Africa to investigate, so before the first batch of rubber was exported, no one knew that East Africa had already surpassed Brazil to become the world’s largest rubber planting nation.

The Brazilian government didn’t have much of a reaction to this matter, because only after East Africa secretly introduced rubber tree species for several years did the British replicate East Africa’s actions, and now Southeast Asia is also trying small-scale cultivation.

The British actions were aboveboard, and when the British were trying cultivation, East Africa’s first rubber production area—the Great Lakes Region—was already ready for harvesting, and several other rubber regions in East Africa were opened up, including the largest rubber region—the Hessen Province planting area (tropical rainforest area on the western slope of the Mitumba Mountains).

Brazil naturally wouldn’t dare criticize Britain, but was very frustrated that East Africa "suddenly" became the top rubber exporter. Previously, Brazil’s oversight of rubber wasn’t strict, considering Brazil inherited its government from Portugal, with low administrative efficiency and severe internal corruption. Under such national circumstances, Brazil managing to block rubber seed exports was impossible.

And now there isn’t even a need, as both East African and Southeast Asian rubber have been planted, East Africa even went further, quietly replacing Brazil as the world’s top rubber producer, making any blockade by the Brazilian government impossible even if desired.

The only thing they can do is expand planting areas to compete with East Africa and in the future with Southeast Asia, making Brazil’s fate fraught with difficulties.

Even if the Brazilian government wanted to take action now, they can probably only hold on for about twenty years, as it’s expected that the entire South American rubber planting industry will eventually be utterly destroyed.

Ernst knows that in the early 20th century, South America’s rubber production wilted due to rubber leaf blight, dropping from over ninety percent of the world share to less than one percent.

Currently, Brazil’s rubber planting industry isn’t as destitute, though East Africa has occupied a large portion of the market, they can still maintain around fifteen percent.

Since the rubber industry was Brazil’s solo feast before, they weren’t highly motivated to expand production, as they could wait and set a high price, while East Africa kept its rubber plantations secluded, under a false sense of security, resulting in their rubber industry being routed by East Africa’s planting.

This is also related to population differences between the two nations. East Africa now has a population of over 50 million (including Black people), and previously had large numbers of Black people at its disposal, consuming at least a million-level of Black people over the years; the eastern regions alone had over ten million Black people initially.

In contrast, Brazil’s national population is just over ten million, so East Africa has ample cheap labor it can utilize while Brazil doesn’t have that fortune, though Brazil is somewhat better off than in the same historical period of its past.

In the past, Brazil’s abolition movement was in 1888. In this life, the timing of Brazil pushing this reform is unknown, but because East Africa expanded its "labor" export business, Brazil benefited, becoming the largest recipient of East African Black people in America.

Though the United States is wealthy, it has to keep things under wraps, and East African Black "labor" requires transit through third-party countries like Haiti, while East Africa can directly send Black "labor" to Rio de Janeiro.

Thus, East Africa practically supplied Brazil with a large amount of cheap labor, especially after East African immigration diminished, using the original immigrant ships to develop American business after; meanwhile, Argentina, like East Africa, had no particular interest in Black people.

Regarding the response to rubber leaf blight, East Africa’s preparation was to gather wild rubber tree species from South America ahead of time, serving as a gene reserve for rubber trees.

In the past, the swift arrival of rubber leaf blight ensured even wild rubber species in Brazil weren’t spared, but Ernst believes these wild rubber tree species surely have significant uses.

Hence, within several years after importing the first batch of rubber seeds, East Africa practically completed this task, unless there exist undiscovered tree species deep within the Amazon rainforest.

The specific period for the outbreak of rubber leaf blight in South America in the past should be around 1905. Of course, this was only the earliest documented time, so the appearance of rubber leaf blight should be around 1900.

But it’s unlikely to be earlier, just as later the Southeast Asian rubber trees, also from South America, were spared from the disease.

The destructive impact of rubber leaf blight on the rubber industry is similar to the damage from banana wilt to Gros Michel bananas, with no good treatment methods other than geographical isolation.

Thus, several rubber planting regions in East Africa, along with numerous banana regions in East Africa, will isolate themselves directly from the South American regions in the future.

With the large-scale extinction of Gros Michel bananas, there are cultivars like Cavendish as substitutes, though finding replacements for rubber trees is not as straightforward; one simple approach is genetic modification or using synthetic rubber in the future.

For genetic modification, East Africa should preserve more wild rubber tree species to prevent other rubber tree species from following Brazil’s rubber industry to total collapse.

Additionally, East Africa should prepare to prevent the tragedy of Brazil’s rubber industry from happening to East Africa itself. Regarding this, Ernst intends to manage East Africa’s four major rubber regions separately over the next twenty years, without direct interference.

Just like how the Thai government, in the past, banned planes from rubber leaf blight-ridden areas in South America from entering directly, ensuring the safety of Thailand’s rubber planting industry.

East Africa should not only eliminate contact between domestic rubber planting areas and South America but also sever direct links among its four major production areas.

East Africa’s four major rubber regions, ranked by planting scale, are: Hessen Province region, Great Lakes Region area, Lake Turkana area (the southern Ethiopian highlands), Eastern coastal plain region.

These regions do not directly border each other, having extensive distances between them, allowing East Africa to place "eggs" in different baskets easily.

Beyond that, East Africa’s banana cultivation industry also needs to take corresponding measures. Banana wilt is another significant hassle, so Ernst hopes Gros Michel bananas can endure in East Africa until the 21st century.