"The development of the automobile industry is a long road, and our East Africa is now only in the stage of painting a scoop, and the only major advantage parts that can be exported may be only tires!" Ernst sighed.

The so-called car tires, that is, rubber tires, Germany and Austria rely on imports of rubber, so the production and processing of rubber is one of the dominant core industries in East Africa, the same as sisal, but there are other production areas in the world, but East Africa is the most suitable for sisal growth.

The rubber processing industry in East Africa has only just started for a few years, but the East African or Hexingen consortium is the patent owner of hollow pneumatic tires, and now the biggest advantage of East Africa is that most of the rubber production is monopolized by East Africa, which is the result of ERNST's early layout.

It will take time for South American countries to respond, as it takes a lot of effort and time to expand production and build new plantations.

In fact, after East African rubber can be exported on a large scale, South American rubber producing areas, especially Brazil, found out that East Africa made a big move, because East Africa was too well disguised before, so it was caught off guard by East Africa.

This is one of the effects of East Africa's closed country policy, East Africa's rubber production areas are almost all inland, that is, the nearest coastal plain production areas are two or three hundred kilometers away from the Indian Ocean, and other countries can not enter East Africa domestic survey, so before the first batch of rubber exports in East Africa, no one knows that East Africa has surpassed Brazil to become the world's largest rubber planter.

The Brazilian government has not reacted much to this incident, because the British have replicated the behavior of East Africa in the past few years since the introduction of rubber tree species in East Africa, and now Southeast Asia is also experimenting with small-scale planting.

The British were doing the right thing, and East Africa was ready to harvest the Great Lakes region, the first rubber producing region in East Africa, and several other rubber producing regions in East Africa were also developed, including the largest rubber producing region, Hesse (a rainforest growing area in the western foothills of the Mitumba Mountains).

Brazil naturally did not dare to blame the United Kingdom, but it was very depressed about East Africa's "suddenly" becoming the first exporter of rubber, before Brazil's supervision of rubber was not strict, after all, the Brazilian government inherited from Portugal, administrative inefficiency, serious corruption within the government, in this national situation, Brazil can do the blockade of rubber exports is simply impossible.

And now there is no need, East Africa and Southeast Asia have planted rubber, East Africa is even more excessive, quietly replaced Brazil as the world's first rubber producer, and now the Brazilian government is impossible to blockade.

The only thing that can be done is to expand the planting area, compete with East Africa, and in the future, compete with Southeast Asia, which can be described as ill-fated.

And even if the Brazilian government wants to do something now, it will probably have to survive for another 20 years, because it is not surprising that the entire rubber plantation industry in South America will be wiped out in the future.

Ernst knew that in the early 20th century, South America would collapse the entire rubber production industry due to rubber leaf blight, from more than 90 percent of the world's share to less than 1 percent.

Brazil's rubber plantation industry is not so sluggish, and although East Africa has seized most of the market, it can still maintain about 15 percent.

Because the rubber industry belonged to the pattern of Brazil eating alone, it did not have much incentive to expand production, after all, it could be sold at a price, and at the same time, the rubber planting in East Africa was tightly covered, so it was defeated by the rubber planting industry in East Africa.

This is also related to the population gap between the two countries, East Africa now has a population of more than 50 million (including blacks), and there were also a large number of blacks for East Africa, East Africa has consumed at least 10 million blacks in recent years, and there were tens of millions of blacks in the eastern region alone.

Brazil has a population of just over 10 million, so there is a lot of cheap labor available in East Africa, while Brazil is not so lucky, but Brazil is better off than it was in the same period in previous lives.

Brazil's abolitionist movement was in 1888, and it is not known when Brazil will push forward with this reform, but Brazil has become a beneficiary of the expansion of East Africa's "labor" business, and it is the largest black recipient in the Americas.

Although the United States has money, after all, it has to hide it, and the black "laborers" in East Africa still need to transit through third-party countries such as Haiti, while East Africa can directly pull the black "laborers" to Rio de Janeiro and send them away.

So East Africa actually imported a lot of cheap labor into Brazil, especially after the reduction of immigrants in East Africa itself, the original immigration ships were used to develop business in the Americas, as for Argentina, like East Africa, it is not cold to blacks.

In response to rubber leaf blight, East Africa can prepare for the harvest of wild rubber tree species in South America in advance as a genetic reserve for rubber tree species.

In previous lives, rubber leaf blight was rampant, including wild Brazilian varieties of rubber, but Ernst believed that these wild rubber species must be of great use.

So East Africa has largely completed this task within a few years of the introduction of the first rubber seeds, unless there are undiscovered tree species deep in the Amazon rainforest.

The specific time period of the outbreak of rubber leaf blight in South America in the previous life should be 1905, of course, this is only the first time that there is a written record, so the time when rubber leaf blight appeared should be around 1900.

But it could not have been earlier, for example, the rubber tree species in Southeast Asia also came from South America, but survived.

Rubber leaf blight is about as devastating to the rubber industry as banana wilt is to Big Mac's bananas, and there is no good cure for it, only geographical isolation.

Therefore, several rubber producing regions in East Africa and many banana producing areas in East Africa will be directly isolated from South America in the future.

The mass extinction of the Big Mac banana, and the banana as a substitute, is not so easy to find as an alternative to the rubber tree, and the easiest way to do it is to wait until the future to be genetically improved, or to use synthetic rubber.

What East Africa can do with genetic improvement is to preserve more wild rubber tree varieties so that other rubber tree species will not be wiped out in the future.

East Africa is also prepared to prevent the tragedy of Brazil's rubber plantation industry from happening to East Africa, and in this regard, ERNST intends to manage the four major rubber producing regions of East Africa separately over the next two decades, without direct intervention in each other.

Just like in the past, the Thai government banned direct access to the rubber leaf blight area in South America to ensure the safety of Thailand's rubber plantation industry.

East Africa will not only have to eliminate contact between domestic rubber growing regions and South America, but also the country's four major production regions must also cut off direct contact.

The four major rubber producing regions in East Africa, according to the size of the cultivation are: Hesse Province, Great Lakes Region, Lake Turkana Region (southern Ethiopian Plateau), and Eastern Coastal Plains Region.

None of these regions are directly bordered, and they are separated by long distances, so it is convenient for East Africa to put "eggs" in different baskets.

In addition, banana farming in East Africa also needs to take relevant measures, and banana wilt is also a big problem, so Ernst hopes that the Big Mac banana will last in East Africa into the 21st century.

(End of chapter)