the story behind "the small tea co-operative"...........
Control over the production and sale of tea has been in the hands of powerful business interests since it first became a commodity in the mid 1800’s. Established by the British East India Company after they lost their tea trade monopoly with China, Assam’s tea plantations have had a large influence over the culture and economy of the region. Aggressive land-use policies stripped many indigenous people of their land rights and encouraged European and non-Assamese entrepreneurs to develop an industry that has been an important foreign exchange earner for the country for the past century.
In 1998, when long-time social activists Kel Kelly and Peggy Carswell were asked by local fair-traders working with the World Community Development Education Society to track down a few small-scale growers who could provide a supply of organic tea, they jumped at the chance to return to Assam. They spent several months traveling throughout the state, riding on buses, in rickshaws and even on the backs of elephants to small villages where tea was, for the first time, being grown as a cash crop by local people. Early on, they discovered that most of the tea being grown
at these family-owned gardens was destined for factories owned by some of the bigger players in tea who were happy to find a cheap source of green leaves.
Unfortunately, most of the new tea entrepreneurs had little or no training in cultivation of tea.The information they had picked up was strongly influenced by practices used in large-scale commercial tea plantations which relied on
monoculture, heavy use of chemical inputs and a large under-paid and overworked work force. Without training and access to appropriately-sized processing equipment, it would be a challenge to locate independent growers who
could supply the Canadian market with organic tea.
Control over the production and sale of tea has been in the hands of powerful business interests since it first became a commodity in the mid 1800’s. Established by the British East India Company after they lost their tea trade monopoly with China, Assam’s tea plantations have had a large influence over the culture and economy of the region. Aggressive land-use policies stripped many indigenous people of their land rights and encouraged European and non-Assamese entrepreneurs to develop an industry that has been an important foreign exchange earner for the country for the past century.
In 1998, when long-time social activists Kel Kelly and Peggy Carswell were asked by local fair-traders working with the World Community Development Education Society to track down a few small-scale growers who could provide a supply of organic tea, they jumped at the chance to return to Assam. They spent several months traveling throughout the state, riding on buses, in rickshaws and even on the backs of elephants to small villages where tea was, for the first time, being grown as a cash crop by local people. Early on, they discovered that most of the tea being grown
at these family-owned gardens was destined for factories owned by some of the bigger players in tea who were happy to find a cheap source of green leaves.
Unfortunately, most of the new tea entrepreneurs had little or no training in cultivation of tea.The information they had picked up was strongly influenced by practices used in large-scale commercial tea plantations which relied on
monoculture, heavy use of chemical inputs and a large under-paid and overworked work force. Without training and access to appropriately-sized processing equipment, it would be a challenge to locate independent growers who
could supply the Canadian market with organic tea.
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In 2001, Carswell helped link up World Community with Tea Promoters, a Bengali-owned company that manages several organic tea gardens and has an excellent track record of being committed to the principles of fair trade.
Since that time, proceeds from the sale of World Community tea have enabled Fertile Ground, a non-profit established by Carswell here in the Comox Valley, to provide training and support to independent tea growers and farmers in Assam.
Since that time, proceeds from the sale of World Community tea have enabled Fertile Ground, a non-profit established by Carswell here in the Comox Valley, to provide training and support to independent tea growers and farmers in Assam.
