Tea
Tea bushes grow in a tropical or subtropical climate. The most important countries with tea plantations are Indonesia, China, India and Brazil. In 1606 the VOC (Dutch East India Company) shipped tea to the Netherlands for the first time. Now a Dutchman drinks on average 750 cups of tea annually. Tea is made from leaves of the tea bush: the Camellia Sinensis.Did you know…
- Tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shen Nung 3000 years BC when some leaves landed by accident in boiling water during a trip in the woods. The emperor tasted the water with the leaves and tea was born
- There are two major types of tea: black and green. Black tea results from leaves that are fully oxidized, while green tea leaves are steamed, rolled and dried without any oxidation
Most important export countries
- Kenya
- China
- Sri Lanka
- India
- Indonesia
Most important production countries
- China
- India
- Kenya
- Sri Lanka
- Turkey
- Indonesia
Production chain
Tea is cultivated on large estates or plantations or by smallholders. Tea plantations are usually located on a mountain slope. The higher the plantation, the slower the tea bush grows. The slower the growth, the better the quality of the tea. There are four basic elements to processing the picked tea leaves: withering, rolling, fermenting and drying. The tea is then shipped in boxes around the whole world. In the tea chain there is quite some added value allocation in the importing countries through repacking, blending and adding aromas to the tea leaves.
Problems
Price fixing, lack of transparency and market power abuse are issues that have been known to happen in tea auctions. Tea smallholders often lose out to larger players in the tea market. The low prices paid for tea tend to be passed on to the poorest segments of a country in the form of low wages on plantations. Job insecurity is also a related issue in tea plantations. Workers are continuously hired on temporary contracts. Even permanent workers’ wages are paid on a daily rate leaving workers unsure about a steady income. The plucking of the tea leaves is a very strenuous and labour-intensive task. Quite often there is no special work clothing for the tea pluckers such as masks, gloves, goggles or boots. Negative environmental aspects associated with tea production include deforestation, water pollution, destruction of fish and aquatic life, landslides and erosion.
Major Chain Issues
In the tea sector, Fairfood International has identified the following major chain issues:
| Major chain | Production stage |
 Insufficient Income and Income insecurity |
Production |
 Unhealthy and unsafe working conditions |
Production |
 Harmful Agricultural or Aquafarming Practices |
Production |
 Degradation of Natural Ecosystems |
Production |
 Corruption |
Whole Chain |
Solutions
The guide below shows certification schemes whose standards indicate a match with some or all of Fairfood’s researched major issues for this commodity. To learn more about the schemes, click on their logo.
 Fairtrade |
 Global Gap |
 EU Organic Labels |
 Naturland |
 Rainforest Alliance |
UTZ Certified |
 IMO Fair for Life |
    Entire chain |
Production |
Production |
Production |
Production |
Production |
Production |
In addition to making use of standards and certification schemes, major issues in this commodity could also be addressed in a customised manner. The box below outlines a few examples of initiatives that deal with sustainability issues in this particular sector. Companies could join some of the platforms or roundtables mentioned below. These could serve as a stepping stone to increased sustainability. Other initiatives, in the form of corporate programmes and chain partnerships, could serve as inspiration for replication by other companies within the sector. To learn more about any of the initiatives, click on their logo.
Chain Partnership |
The Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative of currently twenty tea packers from Europe, North America and Australasia. ETP seeks to improve the sustainability of the tea sector by addressing social and environmental issues at the production level. Established in 2004, its two main goals are to ensure the sustainability of ETP members’ supply chains and to improve the lives of the tea workers. In collaboration with development organisations such as CARE and UNICEF, the ETP offers capacity building at the production level and thereby tackles issues such as insufficient income and income insecurity and unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. Certification and all ETP monitoring are free for producers, although producers might incur costs if audits are conducted by external companies. Priority issues are addressed and verified by this initiative. |
Chain Partnership |
The Kenyan Farmer Field Schools Project was set up in 2006 by Unilever (Lipton) as a private public partnership with the Kenyan Tea Development Agency (KDTA) and the UK government’s department for International Development (DFID). Against the background of Lipton’s commitment to source their tea exclusively from Rainforest Alliance certified farms by the year 2015, the guiding idea of the project is to provide capacity building to smallholder tea farmers in order to enable them to raise both efficiency and sustainability. The target group has been expanded to include 500.000 Kenyan tea farmers and 55 factories at the end of the first round of the project. |
