About 90% of the land being converted into rubber plantations in Ghana right now is done so manually. Men and women use cutlasses to slash and clear old farms and virgin bush; they use large sticks to dig holes in the ground; they plant each rubber tree by hand; they weed between the lines of rubber trees with their cutlasses, while some who have the money use manual sprayers to control undergrowth with pesticides; in teams of three, they apply fertilizer with rubber buckets and cups; all trees are tapped by hand and the latex cuplumps are collected with buckets carried atop heads. Moreover, the regions in Ghana with the right climate and soils for rubber features a very hilly landscape, and these tasks are often completed on steep slopes. I can personally attest that it is exhausting work.