Sri Lanka’s small tea farmers turn sustainable land managers
RATNAPURA, Sri Lanka: As the mercury rises higher, Kamakandalagi Leelavathi delves deeper into the lush green mass of the tea bushes. The past few afternoons there have been thunderstorms. So the 55-yearold tea picker in Uda Houpe tea garden of Sri Lanka’s Hatton region is rushing to complete her day’s task before the rain comes: Harvesting 22 kgs of tea leaves.
“The rain is very unpredictible. Now there are downpours but it has been very dry the past few months,” says the daily wager who owns a one-acre marginal farm. Yet at the Uda Houpe tea garden, the situation is much better, says Daurkarlagi Taranga, Leelavathi’s daughter and fellow tea farmer. “We have not been affected as badly as others. Here, the bushes are still full (of leaves) and the ground is moist thanks to the techniques we use,” she says.
These techniques are assorted green actions taken by small tea planters to manage their farmland in an eco-friendly way, explains Alluth Wattage Saman, manager of the Uda Houpe estate. The most important of these actions is minimising use of synthetic weed killer ( herbicide), widely viewed as the main reason behind the degrading health of soil and tea
These techniques are assorted green actions taken by small tea planters to manage their farmland in an eco-friendly way.
plants in the region.
The tea sector of Sri Lanka is 153 years old and remain the largest industry today, providing employment to 2.5 million people. According to the Sri Lanka Export Development Board, the industry counts for 62 per cent of all agricultural exports and brings home US$ 1.6 billion ( RM7.2 billion) in foreign currency each year. Contributing to this huge business is a 400,000- strong small tea farmer community.
However, the lucrative tea economy of the island nation has been witnessing growing environmental challenges – the biggest of them being severe land degradation.
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification ( UNCCD), there is high rate of land degradation across the tea growing region in Sri Lanka. The biggest reason is that farmers here have used synthetic weed killer on the plantations for several decades.
They also paid little attention to protecting the water sources and biodiversity around the plantations. This has gradually affected the health of the soil, decreasing its fertility level, making it more acidic and also causing soil erosion.
While the degradation has affected the entire industry, the livelihoods and food security of the small tea growers are particularly threatened, says Lalith Kumar, project manager at the Tea Small Holding Development Authority (TSHDA) in Ratnapura, a region that produces over 70 per cent of Sri Lanka’s tea.
The TSHDA is a government agency working with small tea growers in the country. According to Kumar, there are 150 small tea farms ( less than 10 acres of land) in the Ratnapura region alone which provide livelihood to about 100,000 farmers. Climate change has worsened the situation with recurring droughts, erratic rainfall, and increasing soil erosion and acidification.
As a result, tea bushes are withering and moisture from the topsoil is evaporating, leaving the soil hardened and plant roots weak and damaged.
To help the tea farmers deal with this, TSHDA is currently working with the United Nations Environment Program ( UNEP) on a project to minimise herbicide use in the small tea farms and reverse the processes of degradation by sustainably managing the land. — IPS