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ABSTRACT
Rubber cultivation has reached an impressive level in Sabah. At the same time, the sector emerges as one of the main plantation industries along with oil palm in developing the livelihood for rural communities in Sabah. Smallholders mostly produce rubber plantations in Sabah. They make more than 59.6% of the rubber in Malaysia and 6.7% of the rubber produced worldwide, while the sector has contributed to the national economy. Nevertheless, the livelihood of local smallholders has recently suffered due to price volatility and the lack of effectiveness of government intervention. Hence, the study aims to describe the socioeconomic background in Sabah, Malaysia. The study focuses on actual data that was collected primarily in nature by distributing questionnaires and face-to-face interviews from the rubber smallholder in Sabah. The multistage sampling method is used to employ the sample size of 276 rubber smallholders that cover ten areas in Sabah namely Sandakan, Tawau, Keningau, Nabawan, Tenom, Kota Marudu, Kota Belud, Kudat, Tuaran, Ranau. Based on the result, 90.2% of farmers are self-employed in the rubber plantations, while 9.8% participate in a part-time job. Most farmers only obtained a secondary level of education. Then about 73% of farmers are engaged in additional economic activities, such as oil palm, paddy, cocoa, fruits, and vegetables to gain extra income due to the price volatility of rubber commodity. Furthermore, 71% of smallholder farmers have participated in government programs to receive any benefits such as unlocking land access for rubber cultivation. Factors that drive smallholder farmers to engage in rubber cultivation are primarily economic improvement for household income (93.8%), inheritance from parents (3.3%), and personal interest (2.9%). In terms of the input used on the farm, the types of rubber seeds commonly applied by the farmers are PB350, PRIM2001, PRIM2002, RRIM2001, RRIM2002, and RRIM928.
Keywords: Rubber smallholders, economics analysis.
