But being a smallholder does present problems. For example, when it comes to replacing old trees, you'll know about this Andrew, and the average useful life of a rubber tree is about 30 years, this can cause financial problems for the small farmer.

The problem is being tackled, however, by some very enlightened insurance schemes available to the small holder which can give him help through the difficult years. After all, the new trees take some years to mature and start producing rubber.

Yes, indeed they do. I...I...Look, I've got an overhead projection here, which I think will be useful to make the various problems and their solutions clearer to us all. Overhead projection. There wasn't anything wrong with the blackboard in my time, you know... No, but this is clearer and neater and up-to-date.

So, here you see a summary of the position of rubber in Malaysia's economy and here is the first problem, and the solution that has been found through these insurance schemes. Hm, yes, I see. That's really very clear. Now for the second and really major problem. And may I ask what that is?

Boredom and fatigue. Boredom and fatigue? What? What do you mean by that? Well, as with so many societies, the young people are leaving the land for the cities, leaving no one behind to carry on their parents' business. The root cause seems to be simply, boredom.

Rubber is just not that entertaining a product to be involved with. It is labour-intensive in the extreme. Each tree on a plantation has to be tapped, by hand, every other day. Tapped? Yes, yes, well, we... Yes, the trunk is cut and the latex that comes out is collected in a cup.

This is collected on the next day. 400 trees per day is the average figure per worker, which means 800 trees under the care of each worker, ten hours a day. Now as I said previously, the main problem is that of the boredom. The work is not only hard, it is also mind-blowingly tedious.