"Myanmar central government and military authorities have long supported rubber production as a strategic industrial agricultural crop for export to earn foreign exchange. The history of rubber cultivation is important to consider in order to better understand the newly emerging political economy of rubber in the country during the current transition period. Rubber has been cultivated in Myanmar since the British colonial period in the early 20th century, mostly in Mon State. These ?traditional? rubber growing areas in Mon State mostly comprise smallholder rubber plantations that have greatly contributed to the livelihoods of Mon households. Since the past decade, however, a new ?untraditional? frontier area has been targeted for rubber plantation development. In northern Myanmar in Kachin State, northern Shan State, and eastern Shan State, especially including the Wa Self - Administered Region, rubber concessions have swept across the hills in areas that were formerly swidden fields. While rubber in Mon State, Kayin State, and Tanintharyi Region follows more of a smallholder model approach but which is mostly embedded in Chinese rubber markets with Chinese middlemen, rubber development in northern Myanmar follows a private large-scale concessionary model mostly financed by Chinese investment from China?s national opium substitution programme. In the past few years new areas yet again in Myanmar are being targeted by large-scale rubber concessions, this time where smallholder rubber farms already exist, such as in Rakhine State, Mon State, Kayin State, and northern Tanintharyi Region. Local government officials, regional military commanders, and non-state armed groups have allocated rubber concessions through rubber-growing areas in Myanmar over the past decade. These concessions are located in what the government labels ?wastelands?, often in the uplands, which in fact are farmed by local households as ?taungya? (shifting cultivation) plots. Therefore, rubber development in Myanmar that follows the agro-industrial model, are causing serious impacts on local farmers? subsistence livelihoods, as is the case with other industrial agricultural | concessions. Rubber concessions in former customary swidden fields seriously impact local food security and resource access to forests and agro-fields, while rarely providing adequate alternative livelihoods through wage labour employment for local populations. New agricultural wage labour migration for large-sca le rubber concessions, especially in the new production areas in northern Myanmar, is introducing new socio-economic and political tensions to farming communities..."