Tharoor stresses need to reinvent tea trade
dubai — The challenges that face the global tea industry are substantial, but opportunities to resolve, and in the process, reinvent the tea trade exist, Dr Shashi Tharoor, Member of Indian Parliament, said.
Making the keynote speech at the 7th Global Dubai Tea Forum in Dubai on Tuesday, Dr Tharoor said reinvention of the trade require the collective might of the tea industry, from stakeholders across the supply chain, and with legislative support from governments.
He said India’s love affair with tea runs deep across the different regions of the country.
“Not only are we the world’s largest tea drinking country, but we are also one of the largest tea producers in the world, only second to China, with an average of 900,000 tonnes of tea being produced each year. Indian companies have even gone on to acquire a number of iconic foreign tea brands, including British brands Tetley and Typhoo, and are currently some of the most technologically-advanced tea enterprises in the world.”
Dr Tharoor, who is also the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs, said a major challenge to tea production is from rural depopulation, which refers to the migration of the rural population, over a period of time, to urban dwellings.
“A century ago, only 10 per cent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. By 1950, the urban share had risen to 29 per cent, and today it is close to 50 per cent. By the year 2030, 60 per cent of the world’s population is projected to live in urban areas, ranging from market towns to mega cities,” he said.
One by-product of this rural-tourban migration has been the migration of agricultural workers to cities in search of higher wages and better living opportunities.
“This has adversely affected tea plantations around the world in particular, given the industry’s reliance on labour-intensive production methods (particularly in the plucking of tea-leaves),” said Dr Tharoor.
He said tea, like other commodities, has been suffering a decline in prices, and exports are dwindling; many tea plantations, faced with rising wages and collapsing profits, are threatening to close down.
“However, more than rising wages and dwindling exports, the challenges that I find will have the greatest impact on the tea industry are not challenges that apply to the tea industry alone, but indeed, represent global concerns that have come to typify the 21st century. Whether it is the changing patterns in land use, necessitated by the need to feed larger populations, or climate change-induced extreme weather events that have put tea production at risk in many of the main tea producing countries, the tea industry has a number of pressing concerns,” said Dr Tharoor.
Most of the 35 countries where tea is currently grown are also the countries most vulnerable to climate change and if extreme weather events affect several growing areas simultaneously, it will impact on tea yields and tea prices. But while climate change presents one of the steepest challenges to the tea industry on the production side, a more immediate concern for tea producers relates to the dwindling consumption of tea, especially among millennials and the younger generations, Dr Tharoor said.
— issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com