These manual practices have not been in place in Malaysia for decades. Here, land is cleared using tractors and heavy machinery. Pesticides, not cutlasses, control weeds, and it is applied with machines. Fertilizer is also applied with machines, and the precise chemical used is determined by the strain of the rubber tree present on the plantation. On hilly parcels of land, bulldozers convert the slopes into terraces to prevent against erosion and also make tapping an easier, quicker task. From what I saw, though, land tends to be much flatter in Malaysia than in Ghana. This aids the industry here in more ways than one; one research site estimated that it is 30% more costly to develop a hilly hectare of land than a flat one (~$2,100 as compared to ~$3,000 per hectare).