The company will buy latex from the farmers at a prevailing price in the market under a transparent contract, company`s president Togar Simanjuntak said here on Wednesday.
Togar said the company already developed cooperation with rubber farmers in North Sumatra and other regions in the country by buying their latex and offering them training and seedlings.
"If the cooperation would be promoted to a more concrete form under contract it would be a stronger partnership," he said.
He said since starting operation in 2005, Bridgestone has distributed around one million high quality rubber seedlings among farmers to increase their productivity .
Currently the farmers` productivity is still relatively low, less than a million tons of latex per hectare on the average, he said.
Edy Irwansyah, the executive secretary of the North Sumatra branch of the Indonesian Association of Rubber Companies (Gapkindo), said low productivity had been a drag in the development of rubber industry in the region.
Edy also said declining trend of rubber price has discouraged farmers from continuing to properly tend their crop.
The price is still far below the level considered ideal at US$3 per kilogram for the type of SIR 20.
On Tuesday, SIR 20 closed at US2.387 per kilogram at Singapore market for September delivery, he said .
The price even falls again to US$2,353 per kg for delivery in October this year, he said.
"The price has to go up in order to encourage the farmers to boost their production," he said. (ASG/B003)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
