SEARCH FOR RUBBER

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13670, 18 June 1942, Page 8

SEARCH FOR RUBBER

JUNGLES OF PANAMA

Scoured By Indians

Wild And Semi-wild Trees

Wild and semi-wild rubber which until the development of plantation rubber in the Far East formed an important part of Panama’s exports to the United States, now bids fair to return to its place of importance as the rubber shortage forces the price up to a point where the rubber can be collected and shipped to the markets of North America, writes Agnes Wilcox Campbell in the “Christian Science Monitor.”

Agricultural experts of both the United States and Panamanian Governments variously ? estimate the number of wild and semi-wild trees at between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000. Jungle “old-timers” and Indians speak quietly of thousands of scattered wild trees in the valleys along the upper reaches of the Bayano River in Darien district 150 miles east of the Panama Canal. Reports are unanimous that the rubber trees are there and are ready for tapping, but they all stress the many difficulties which need to be overcome in collecting this wild rubber. In addition to the truly wild rubber trees, there are large quantities of semi-wild trees on old abandoned plantings set out from 25 to 40 years age by five or six different companies who speculated and lost on it. In 19 07, a report published by the Darien Gold Mining Company listed among its assets rubber plantations containing 2 50,000 trees ranging at that time from one to five years in age. Rubber trees are not large enough to tap until they are about eight years old. The Darien Gold Mining Company trees would now be between 35 and 40 years old and capable of bearing. The total number of trees planted in the region of Darien is placed at hundreds of thousands and some estimates are as high as a million. Charles L. Luedtke, United States Agricultural Attache to Panama, warns, however, that “all such figures must be taken for what they are worth, since no careful census has even been taken, and most, if not all, of these estimates are based on the .number of trees that were planted.” t While governmental surveys and speculations proceed apace and while a group of North American rubber experts are expected momentarily, the old-time export firms like the Colon Import and Export Company who formerly shipped tons of crude rubber to the United States markets, have quietly sent out scouts to tell the jungle people that the firm is once more interested in purchasingall the latex: —crude rubber —or “caucho” as it is called in Panama, that can be brought in to them. Samples of the product are already arriving on the company’s coastal trading boats, and every day more of the people “jungle-wise” enough to survive the hardships which they know they will encounter in gathering the wild rubber slip, quietly off for Darien. Reminiscing across the counters of the trading companies about the old-time rubber trade in Panama, exporters tell many tales of the hardships and difficulties of the business. The wild trees —most of those in Panama are scattered throughout vast jungle tracts —-are believed to be of the Castilla variety which can yield at most about three pounds of dry rubber a year. The men gathering the “caucho” must lead spartan lives in order to reach and get out the slabs of crude rubber. Semi-wild rubber is easier to obtain since the plantations were laid out along the banks of rivers which would afford .transportation. The “caucho” gatherer slits the bark of the tree horizontally about half-way round the trunk and places a pan or cup at the end of the slit. To completely girdle the tree would be to probably kill it. The sap of the tree, or the “latex” drips into the cup and is then collected into a larger vessel. Into this thick milky substance, alum, white ashes or chunks of ordinary laundry soap are thrown to cause the water to separate from the rubber.

The evil-smelling glutinous mass left in the pan is then smoked over primitive camp fires and the slabs packed out of the jungle on men’s backs or transported down the rivers in “piraguas” —flat-bottomed canoes hollowed out of single large tree trunks. At the coastal villages the rubber is sent by trading schooners and launches to the markets in Panama City and Colon.

Until the beginning of the present century all commercial rubber came from natural or wild rubber sources similar to that to be found in Panama to-day. Wild rubber continued to

furnish over one-half of the world’s rubber supply until about 1914, when competition from plantation rubber of the Far East forced the price of wild rubber to such a low point that no one would venture into the jungles after it. By 193 9 only 3 per cent of the world’s supply came from wild sources. Rubber experts explain this by pointing out that wild or semi-wild trees can yield only a small percentage of dry rubber a year in comparison with the highyield trees developed in The Far Eastern plantations. Various companies, including Goodyear, have experimented with plantings of the Far Eastern high-yield trees in Panama, but these do not thrive in the Panamanian climate, making it necessary to depend upon the native varieties. The United States is the largest user of rubber in the world even in normal times importing around G 50.000 tons a year. In 1940, imports of crude rubber into the United States amounted to 818,000 long tons, valued at 318,000,000 dollars. Approximately 9 7 per cent of these imports came from the Far East and it now remains to be seen just what percentage of this supply can be filled from the longneglected Central and South American jungles of which the Panamanian situation is typical. While crude rubber sold for as high as 1.10 dollars a pound in New York during the last war, exporters to-day say; “Give us 60 cents a pound in New York and we’ll find men to risk their lives to get it out to you.”