Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1483499
8 STiR coffee and tea | 2022 Issue 5 (October/November) Point of View D Editor & Publisher Glenn Anthony John glenn@coffeetea.media Managing Editor Brian Mertens brian@octobermultimedia.com Tea Correspondent Dan Bolton tea@coffeetea.media Coffee Correspondent coffee@coffeetea.media Art Director Somjet Thitasomboon snt@octobermultimedia.com Special Correspondents Thomas Schmid Contributing Writers Dan Engel (Europe) Gordon Feller (U.S.) Eugene Gerdin (Russia) Bethany Haye (Colombia) Sherri Johns (U.S.) Sunalini Menon (India) Shem Oirere (Africa) Carrie Pallardy (U.S.) Translations (China) TC Online Administrative Assistant Sommai Jekaram asj@octobermultimedia.com Subscriptions Malisa Kongkatitum malisa@stir-tea-coffee.com Sales Director Emerson Leonard edl@octobermultimedia.com Director, October Inter Co., Ltd. Boonthin Tubsongkroh brt@octobermultimedia.com c/o October Inter Co. Ltd. Interchange 21 Bldg., 32nd Fl., Room 3225, 399 Sukhumvit Road, North Klong Toey, Wattana, Bangkok, 10110, Thailand Tel +66 2 660 3789 www.stir-tea-coffee.com Published by: A Member of: arjeeling is one of the world's favorite tea origins, but you wouldn't quite know it from the dire state of the business there. Dozens of tea estates are up for sale, unable to cope with a variety of new and old problems that have made profitable operations elusive. Rising to the occasion, STiR's India-based contributor Aravinda Anantharaman explores 10 tactics and strategies that could help steer the district's legendary tea production back into the black (page 26). Above all, she says, stakeholders need to do more to work together on tasks like planning, lobbying, marketing, and sharing solutions. That local business crunch is one symptom of a global problem of low tea prices, judging from this issue's Tea Report by STiR's tea editor Dan Bolton (page 14). Prices have been flat over the past two decades, and falling in real terms, i.e., adjusted for inflation. Global tea exports totaled $7.3 billion in 2021, down 9.7% from $8.1 billion in 2017. Market growth of 4–5% before the pandemic has slowed to 2.5% today. The underlying problem appears to be the doubling of global production since 2000, to 6 billion kilograms per year. That rise appears to have outpaced the market growth driven by fast rising per-capita consumption as well as population growth. The result is a likely oversupply of tea today. Coffee too faces risks, as highlighted in a feature by Colombia contributor Bethany Haye (page 22). Climate change is the menace, threatening to make more of the planet inhos- pitable to growing coffee, just as consumption is booming. Farms can be moved to higher elevations and cooler climates, bringing new areas under cultivation of coffee for the first time. Hardier varieties of coffee are being developed to resist drier, hotter conditions and the pests and blights that thrive in them. Digital transformation appears headed for coffee and tea. Brazilian researchers have devel- oped AI that sorts beans into specialty and commodity grades automatically, as reported in this issue's Coffee Report (page 12). More promising still is a sophisticated technology from a Singaporean startup, ProfilePrint, that lets industry buyers and sellers of coffee and tea offload a great deal of the hassle of shipping and testing samples. The company offers a cloud-based service using artificial intelligence to produce rich data profiles of a sample, skipping lab tests and taste tests for a broad screening of product prior to protocoled tasting (page 40). It's no coincidence that the company's CEO is a tea lover who has spent much of his career in tea drinking domiciles like China, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Another topic here is certifications. As discussed in our Tea Report (page 16) the Rainforest Alliance will soon begin collecting premiums from industry buyers of certified tea (as well as other products). The group will pass on the premiums in full to growers to help them fund sustainability work. The Global Coffee Platform has been working to make it easier to compare sustainability benchmarks and matrixes across the many frameworks that now exist (page 32). Meanwhile in Malawi, a group of coffee cooperatives laments its loss of Fair Trade certification after a collapse of coffee prices in 2017 left the group unable to pay some salaries (page 44). With- out the Fair Trade imprimatur, the group's prices are too low to enable it to clear its debts. For now, the farmers group pins its hope on crowdfunding efforts. I welcome your personal observations and story tips on the global business of tea and coffee. — Brian Mertens Managing Editor