STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 45 A routine logical part of the cases made in support of mech- anization is that any increase in wages threatens industry viabil- ity. Unilever argued in court that a 30% increase in basic wage was "not affordable." A compliance report on one of India's largest growers publicly published figures on its 25 estates that employ 90,000 workers with 300,000 members of their families living on them. The firm agreed in 2013 to make improvements in pay and living conditions but there was no progress three years later. The case was still under review in court suits and by regulators in 2019: still no progress. The company admits to its limited response being due to "the continued financial distress of the industry." It has made a loss every year since 2015. It's easy to label the growers and estate owners as either hard-hearted or hard-headed. Here's an example of their core problem, from an Oxfam report on Assam and West Bengal in India: from 2012-2018, labor rates grew at close to three times that of auction prices. For tea drinkers, the impacts of mechanization are mostly in keeping tea bags inexpensive and ensuring reliable and consis- tent production of lower grade broken leaf, ready to drink and iced teas and flavored blends. It's a method for basic tea: good enough, rather than best. For that, hand plucking, mountain el- evations, superior soil and water management, and artisan craft are core to specialty tea. While this is a relatively small fraction of the total market, it is an area where at the other end of the supply chain, specialty tea sellers, mostly online, are what may be termed social entrepreneurs. They work directly with individual tea gardens to help them get a better price and build a stronger management base for pro- ducing a superior quality tea. They foster collaborative groups such as villages, smallholder cooperatives, and family farms. A priority is to educate and inform consumers to make them more sensitive to the issues and be willing to pay a small premium for socially beneficial tea, as they do for organic and health support- ing tea. There are too many such online sellers to list. The poverty traps Tea has always been associated with poverty, from the colonial enforced importation of indentured labor – a much softer term than serfdom or slavery – physical isolation today in remote ar- Mechanical devices are improving. Today they contribute to keeping tea bags inexpensive and ensuring reliable and consis- tent production of lower grade broken leaf, ready to drink and iced teas and flavored blends.

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