Tagged: small tea growers
Who Makes Money From a Cup of Tea?
A 2019 field study traced a kilogram of Assam tea through five pairs of hands and found the factory keeps the largest cut, ahead of the farm. A 2021 study of Vietnam's Thai Nguyen chain found close to the opposite. The arithmetic behind both.
Assam's Tea Economy
Assam alone grows more tea than any country except China and India itself, over half of India's total, out of three ownership models sharing one valley: private estates, a shrinking state corporation, and small growers who now grow about half its leaf.
Darjeeling's Tea Economy
Darjeeling's tea output has roughly halved in a decade and roughly half its 87 gardens have been reported as ready for sale, while the name itself has been registered abroad and placed under compulsory licensing at home.
India's Tea Industry
The world's second-largest tea producer is also its largest tea-drinking nation, and the two facts explain most of the rest. How a colonial plantation crop became four distinct growing regions, a smallholder sector now growing about half of Assam's leaf, an auction system half its own producers now want to escape, and a trade caught between a record export year and three separate fights over access.
The Tea Board of India
The statutory body that licenses every tea garden in the country, forces half the crop through public auction, and owns the Darjeeling name outright. It was built on a cess that no longer exists.