High prices also encouraged smallholders to plant rubber instead of rice cultivation and other subsistence farming. For example by 1921 smallholders accounted for 48 per cent of the total rubber cultivated area in Perak. Compared with rice cultivation which is highly seasonal, rubber tapping provides a regular flow of income and is less arduous. 

By the 1930s Malaya became the world’s largest natural rubber producer. The use of an improved method of tapping to extract the maximum flow of latex with the minimum damage to trees helped increase supply.

In 1905 Malaya’s rubber exports amounted to only 130 tons, about 5 per cent of all cultivated rubber produced worldwide and just 0.2 per cent of all world rubber exports. By 1919 Malaya’s exports of rubber exceeded that of the rest of the world combined (see chart below). Apart from the period under Japanese rule, Malaya’s share of world supply of rubber  did not fall below 30 per cent until the late 1980s. In 1990, Malaysia still accounted for 25 per cent of world natural rubber output, but by then rubber’s contribution to the country’s export earnings was less than 4 per cent, compared with 55 per cent 30 years earlier. At the end of the 20th century rubber accounted for less than 1 per cent of Malaysia’s total export earnings.