Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
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Steeped in Social issues play as big a role with tea as with coffee, but they're shaped by differences between the two crops. BY PAN DEMETRAKAKES Farmers harvest the crop at the Thien Hoang Organic Tea Club in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Fair Trade USA S ustainability has achieved a high profile with coffee. What about tea? The two crops are both grown largely in Third World nations. This leads to parallel concerns about agricultural and environmental protections, and fair wages for farm workers. There's another parallel: The clientele for both coffeehouses and teahouses is oſten receptive to sustainability concerns. "We would never carry teas that weren't true to these standards," Susan Broughton, owner of All Things Tea, Kitchener, Ontario, wrote in an e-mail. "Our clientele has always held us to this, and it is something we too stand for." In fact, demand for sustainable tea in some cases runs ahead of supply, says Bill Waddington, owner of TeaSource, a tea importer and supplier. "I think the concept of sustainability is just as prevalent in the minds of retail tea customers as it is in the retail coffee customers," Waddington says. "But I don't think the concept has taken as strong a hold in the product cycle of the tea industry." The two leading sustainability certifiers, Fair Trade USA and the Rainforest Alliance, have programs for tea as well as coffee. Alex Morgan, the Rainforest Alliance's manager for North America for sustainable agriculture, admits that "we haven't seen a whole lot of movement in the tea market in the U.S., and a lot of this has been because the supply hasn't been available." The sustainability factor in tea may be small compared with increased steadily, from 86,706 pounds certified in 2002 to 1,889,259 in 2010. The Rainforest Alliance's tea program is newer, but growing just as fast: from 50,000 metric tons certified in 2008 to about 175,000 tons in 2010 (and an estimated 200,000 this year). MORE COFFEE THAN TEA In terms of the overall global crops, the Rainforest Alliance actually certifies a greater proportion of tea (6.6 percent) than coffee (2 percent), Morgan says. This is partly due to the greater consolidation in tea farming. "When you have [tea] farms that are maybe 2,000 hectares versus the average farm in coffee that's maybe two hectares, it's a lot easier to get a larger portion of the supply certified," Morgan says. Other differences between the two crops shape their respective sustainability issues. Tea is harvested weekly throughout most of the year, while coffee is harvested only once or twice a year, says Lee Byers, senior advisor for coffee and tea for Fairtrade International, the parent organization of Fair Trade USA (until the end of this year). "So while coffee producers have to manage their income for the entire year/season, tea producers can usually rely on a steady income," Byers wrote in an e-mail. Another big difference between the crops is market pricing. coffee, but it's growing. Fair Trade USA's tea certification has Most coffee is traded as an international commodity through 18 | November 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com