STiR coffee and tea magazine

42 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 2, 2018 (April / May) By Jane Pettigrew T he poor quality and low value of Nilgiri tea has since the 1990s caused severe hardship for smallholder farmers. Now, a new manufacturing unit has opened that aims to change the way tea is plucked and processed adding value to the teas from India's famous Southern hills. High in the Nilgiri Hills just outside Coonoor, a new tea factory of revolutionary design and striking visual impact lies at the very heart of tea country, surrounded by tea bushes that grow right up to the front gate and perimeter walls. Tea Studio is an innovative project that provides local tea growers with a processing unit designed to manufacture high-quality specialty teas. It is the brainchild of Indi Khanna, tea maker, who has dedicated the last four decades of his life to the production of quality specialty teas, and who has, for many years, been aware of the challenges facing tea producers in Southern India and vowed to try and find a solution. Challenges in the Nilgiri The steeply winding roads that lead upwards from the lower plains of Tamil Nadu in Southern India to heights of 7,000 to 8,000 feet in the Nilgiri Hills climb through mile after mile of vertiginous slopes that appear to be wrapped entirely in tea bushes. Es- tablished as a commercial tea growing region in the 1850s, the region's tea bushes seem at first glance to still be the only crop grown here. But things are changing, and when you look more carefully amongst the swathes of green, you notice vast polytunnels and large areas of bare red earth where diggers and tractors have cleared and leveled the land to plant other crops. This is a region of smallholder farmers who, in the past, made a living by cultivating tea and selling the fresh leaf to local factories. But since the late 1990s, this traditional crop has not brought the profit and security that the growers need, and so they are turning to other ways of earning a living. The causes of the tea farmers' problems are many and varied. Unlike Darjeeling and Assam in the northeast of India, where large estates account for the majority of tea production, 70% of Nilgiri tea is grown by smallholders. These farm plots are Tea Studio Smallholder Innovation in the Nilgiri Hills The Tea Studio design demonstrates a small-scale solution for smallholders The Studio produces 11 specialty teas Withering troughs are lined with soft black fabric that allows the leaf to be moved without causing damage Nilgiri Tress

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