STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 29 Trustworthy advising ... Use our knowledge to your benefit. With our outstanding experience in tea buying and blend development, we offer you high-quality teas, sophisticated formulations and latest tea innovations. Independently. Personally. Since 1992. Get an impression of us: www.kktee.de Lipton CEO Nathalie Roos and Browns Investments Executive Chairman Ishara Nanayakkara sign their momentous partnership agreement. There's also been growth in places like Uganda and Vietnam. "Unfortunately," Laurent says, "the tea quality has generally gone down. You have specialty tea, like you have with coffee, and that's doing well. But tea otherwise, the tea has actually become rather ordinary in quality." It's the harvesting that's changed, he says. "The quality really is in what you pluck," Laurent says. "Two leaves and a bud is, of course, the freshest tea. White tea is made out of the buds. Farther down the stem, the fourth leaf is quite a hardened leaf and doesn't have as much flavor. If you pick four, five leaves and a bud, the best brains in the world cannot make good tea." With the commoditization of tea, Laurent ex- plains, it's mainly three or four leaves and a bud that are being mechanically harvested rather than hand-picked by a highly skilled picker with 20 years' experience. Displacement and Replacement As hand-pickers are being replaced by harvesting machines, the Kenyan Talai and Kipsigis commu- nities are seeing flashbacks of the colonial-era land grab by the British, which was recognized when in 2019, Kenya's National Land Commission ruled that the land had been unlawfully seized. In the early 20th century, the British army evicted members of the Talai and Kipsigis clans from land in Kericho to grow crops on several hundred thousand acres of land there. While many indigenous families found work with the multina- tionals, they secured their jobs at a price. The Kericho plantation had a history of violence and sexual harassment violations long

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