STiR coffee and tea magazine

16 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 3, 2017 (June/July) Tea Report: Jane Pettigrew AFRICA New FAO Tea Officer Senior Economist Jean Luc Mastaki Namegabe was recently named team leader for raw materials, horticulture, and tropical products (RAMHOT) at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and therefore also takes over responsibility for the secre- tariat of the intergovernmental group (IGG) on tea in the FAO's trade and markets division. Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Mastaki Namegabe has 20 years' experience in rural and agricultural economics, trade and development. He has a PhD in rural economics from the University of Liege, Belgium, and a master's degree in agricultural economics from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He began his career as professor in the economic departments in various universities in the DRC. He later worked for more than 12 years as an economic affairs officer in the United Nations Economic Commis- sion for Africa (UNECA). Mastaki Namegabe's first meeting with representatives of the global tea industry and trade took place at the 1st International Tea Convention in Yibin, Sichuan, China, in March. He will play a prominent role at the FAO IGG Tea 23rd inter sessional meeting, to take place in Sri Lanka in August. ARGENTINA El Club del Té Expands Victoria Bisogno has announced that El Club del Té, an international organiza- tion based in Buenos Aires and dedicated to the development and promotion of tea culture, is launching activities in 12 new cities. Beginning in April courses and cuppings will be offered in Argen- tina (Puerto Madryn and Misiones), Chile (Santiago), Peru (Lima), Panama (Panama City), Brazil (São Paulo and Porto Alegre), and Spain (Madrid, A Coruña), and the Canary Islands. The events will be organized and presented by a team of certified tea sommeliers from the club. These activities will be part of the events that Bisogno, founder and president of the tea club, has been organizing since the company was founded in 2009. The first of the new activities will be a course entitled 'An Introduction to Tea', and this will explain the most important aspects of this ancient beverage, including its origins, tea producing regions, world tea ceremonies, and brewing methods. The events are scheduled to continue throughout the year with professional cuppings of teas from different producing countries, including China, Japan, and India. AUSTRALIA Teabag Wetland Project Scientists have launched a project that aims to bury thousands of teabags in wetlands around the world to try and discover how efficient the different wetlands are at capturing and storing carbon dioxide. They recognize that a standard technique for monitoring the carbon is needed for accurate compari- son, but monitoring devices would cost too much. By simply burying teabags and measuring the rate at which the tea decays, the scientists will be able to measure how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere. Fast decay of the tea will mean that more carbon is being released; slower decay will indicate that the soil is retaining the carbon. Deakin University researcher Peter Macreadie, leader of the project, said "Some wetlands are much better at carbon storage than others. We need to find out the best wetland environments for carbon sequestration so we know where to invest energy." Lipton teabags are being used because they are already favoured by international researchers studying carbon sequestration, and they are available around the world. Green tea and rooibos teabags have been chosen because they contain different com- pounds and green tea breaks down faster than rooibos. "If we have these two teas out there in the same environment, we can examine how they degrade compara- tively to each other and in comparison, to other environments," explained project coordinator Stacey Trevathan- Tackett. The bags are numbered and labelled, a GPS point is noted, and40-80 teabags are buried at each site. They will be monitored over a three-year period and then dug up and measured at three month, six month, and one year intervals. The executive director of the global carbon project described the project as "a great idea. Wetlands are extremely threatened around the world, so anything we can do to highlight their benefits to society will certainly give us more ammunition to convince agencies and governments and non-government groups to put resources towards their conservation." BANGLADESH Tea Output Increased Bangladesh's tea output for 2016 grew by nearly 27% over the previous year to a record 85 million kg, and this may be enough of a rise to mean that the country no longer needs to import tea from elsewhere. Domestic consumption has been rising at a rate of more than 3% per year as the economy grows, and has now reached a total of 81.6 million kg sold annually through the Chittagong auctions to mainly Bangledeshi buyers and packers. Jean Luc Mastaki Namegabe El Club del Té Teabag test in Australian wetlands

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