As a woman rising up on a tea farm within the Aberdare Hills of Kenya’s central highlands, Nancy Githaigab would usually get up to the sight of elephants trampling via the neat, knee-high inexperienced bushes of her father’s crop.
“We would run out with a tin, which would have some fire inside so that it smoked, and bang the tin until the elephants ran away,” she says, gesturing throughout the misty inexperienced valley of the farm, which the now-55-year-old has since inherited. “The girls were not really supposed to take part, but I would sneak out and join them.”
The space’s elephants, buffalo and hyenas have lengthy been banished behind the electrical fence of the Aberdare National Park, a vacationer hotspot which is only a ten minute drive away. Instead, farmers like Nancy are going through as much as the far bigger environmental menace of the local weather disaster, which lately has been devastating the area’s crop.
An estimated 100 million cups of tea are drunk within the UK day by day – and of these, round fifty per cent are provided by Kenyan tea farms. Most tea from Kenya comes from smallholder farms like Nancy’s, which normally measure lower than one hectare, quite than the massive tea estates of India or Sri Lanka, that are maybe higher recognized.
When The Independent visited Nancy’s farm just lately – as a part of a visit organised with the Fairtrade Foundation – unseasonably chilly temperatures had slowed the expansion of Nancy’s tea bushes, that means that they had been solely being plucked 4 or 5 days per week, quite than the standard six. Rain patterns have additionally change into way more chaotic, with drought drying out bushes at sure occasions of yr, whereas intense storms and devastating landslides come at others.
“Last year the landslides damaged six homes, buried livestock, and took out the electricity for quite some time – though thankfully nobody was hurt,” says Nancy. “This climate problem is really major for us. I believe that if things continue the way they are, the very existence of tea farming in this area will be threatened.”
The impacts of climate-driven excessive climate are a relentless preoccupation to Nancy, each in her function engaged on her personal farm, and in her place as chairman of the Gatunguru Tea Factory, which is a cooperative of greater than 8,000 native tea farmers, which is centred round a processing plant.
Visiting the tea processing manufacturing facility itself in the course of the day, The Independent witnessed a decent operation of vehicles laden with plucked inexperienced tea delivering their load, which then undergoes a multi-day strategy of drying, reducing and fermenting – turning it from inexperienced to gold to brown to near-black – earlier than it’s packed in sacks prepared for delivery.
But upon returning at night time, the equipment lay quiet, with musty, tea-infused air the one reminder of the day’s exercise. “This is another indication of climate change: normally we have a 24 hour operation” says Nancy. It is a worrying signal that weak yields of the final yr are set to proceed, after tea manufacturing at Gatanguru declined by 25 per cent final yr, from 24 million tonnes of tea in 2023/4 to 17 million tonnes of tea in 2024/5.
‘Calamity of climate change’
Nancy is considered one of greater than 600,000 smallholder tea farmers in Kenya, who collectively have hundreds of thousands extra in dependents. The tea business is one thing of a cornerstone in Kenya’s financial system, with the variety of hectares farmed persevering with to develop year-on-year, and the crop representing by far the nation’s most beneficial export. But all throughout the nation, farmers are reporting local weather considerations.
For Edmund Biwott, a tea farmer within the West of the nation, local weather change has introduced a disastrous new climate phenomenon within the type of hailstones, which kind after heat air from Lake Victoria meets cool air within the highlands. The hailstones seem initially of the wet season, tearing via the tea leaves of his crop, and making them unsellable to his tea manufacturing facility, which known as Momul.
“Ten years ago, we had never seen hailstones, but now this calamity of climate change is impacting us drastically,” says Edmund, who has 11 individuals relying on him, together with six youngsters. “I have asked the factory for some compensation, because we are depending on this for a living, we have nothing else.”
The hailstones have pressured Edmund to prune his bushes after only one yr, as a substitute of the standard 4, which leads to them being unable to supply sellable leaves for round three months, additional compounding his issues. Last yr, the 4,098kg of tea he produced was round 30 per cent under the 5,794kg he produced the earlier yr.
At occasions of decrease manufacturing, the legal guidelines of economics would usually maintain that the market ought to compensate producers with greater costs. But continual oversupply of tea within the total Kenyan market signifies that this has not been the case: Particularly speedy development in bigger tea estates has resulted in total tea manufacturing rising by as a lot as 3.5 per cent yearly over the previous 15 years, regardless of world demand rising by lower than 1 per cent.
Government coverage round tea has additionally not helped a big variety of farmers, based on Bernard Njoroge, senior programme officer Fairtrade Africa. In 2021, a legislation was launched banning farms from taking part in direct gross sales to patrons, and as a substitute mandating them to promote by way of public sale within the coastal metropolis of Mombasa, which is a course of that sometimes results in a lot decrease costs for farmers. The coverage has since been revoked – however lots of the patrons who most well-liked direct gross sales had already switched to purchasing from neighbouring nations.
All of this has had a significant affect on tea farmers round Momul, with some farms within the space pressured to promote tea under the value of manufacturing in latest months.
“The last few months have been very difficult, and I have been forced to take out a loan to pay for school fees, which I have not been able to pay back,” says Edmund. “It makes me very sad… it’s embarrassing, and the worry drains my energy.”
A latest survey of Kenyan tea growers discovered that just one in 5 mentioned that they had been incomes sufficient to assist their households with all that they want – whereas analysis from the UN has discovered that the value of tea in actual phrases has been declining by 2 per cent per yr since 2011.
For their half, the UK’s main tea manufacturers preserve that coping with the dual issues of local weather change and poverty wages is a significant precedence for them.
A spokesperson for Taylors of Harrogate – which owns the UK’s high promoting model, Yorkshire Tea – instructed The Independent that the corporate was “committed to working with our suppliers and others to mitigate risks and support adaptation to the growing challenges”, whereas a spokesperson for Tata Consumer Products – which owns Tetley – mentioned that the corporate was working with farmers to “train them in sustainable practices like soil management, rainwater harvesting and drip irrigation”.
According to their suppliers lists, each Yorkshire Tea and Tetley supply tea from Gatanguru and Momul tea factories.
Gareth Mead, sustainability officer at Lipton, which owns PG Tips, mentioned that whereas the impacts of local weather change will be “devastating for individual farmers”, the important thing downside going through the market in Kenya is “chronic overproduction”, which has left the value of tea at round 2 or 3p per teabag.
“We consider serving to farmers to concentrate on high quality as a substitute of amount will enhance the value they’ll obtain whereas additionally enhancing the cuppa so tea lovers will worth it too,” he mentioned. “This in turn will support the improvements we all want to see.”
‘Training allowed me to increase yields’
Elsewhere in Kenya’s highlands, Luke Wahome and his wife Irene farm a stunningly green strip of steep valleyside, which is carpeted down to a river with winding tea bushes. Part of the 7,000-farmer-strong Iriaini Tea Factory near Nyeri, it lies not far from the Treetops Hotel, where a young Princess Elizabeth found out she had become Queen in 1952.
But the beauty of the spot belies the poverty conditions that the combination of climate change and chronic low prices is forcing tea farmers into. The living income for Kenyan tea farmers is estimated to be around 50,000 shillings (£280) per month – but Luke is only able to earn 56,000 shillings per year from his tea, forcing him to live in extremely modest conditions. He tells the Independent how he has struggled to pay back debts from multiple lenders, continually repeating that his income is “not enough, not enough”.
The one saving grace for Luke lately has been the tea he has been in a position to promote as Fairtrade via Iriaini, which is a Fairtrade-certified manufacturing facility. That certification signifies that farmers should uphold sure requirements round labour and environmental practices – and in return they obtain coaching in direction of higher farming observe, in addition to an extra “Premium” fee in each Fairtrade tea sale, which Iriaini golf equipment collectively and spends on the group.
“The practices that I learnt through training has allowed me to increase my yield from 400kg per year to 1,200kg per year,” he says. Before Fairtrade got here, he was incomes simply 20,000 shillings per yr – the improved practices, together with round tillage and fertilisation, imply that he has greater than doubled his revenue.
Down the street from Luke and Irene is Martha Mukundi, a mom of two, who can also be grateful for the assist she has acquired from Fairtrade. For her, the important thing profit has been assist in diversifying her operation, which signifies that even when the tea crop is weak, she’s going to nonetheless earn a great revenue. As effectively as 5,200 bushes of tea, she now has 62 avocado bushes, ardour fruit bushes, and a dairy cow, all of which now collectively contribute an analogous quantity to her revenue because the tea.
“Fairtrade introduced us to avocado and passion fruit farming, as well as dairy farming,” she says. “The increased drought we experience has unfortunately affected my avocado farming some years – but overall Fairtrade has had a positive effect.”
The motive Fairtrade is so impactful, based on Fairtrade UK’s CEO Eleanor Harrison, is as a result of though there could be some prices concerned in auditing Fairtrade operations on the farmer facet, the additional revenue farmers obtain by way of the Fairtrade Premium provides a “far better economic benefit”. Other well-known accreditation schemes truly characterize a internet monetary price for farming cooperatives because of the prices of implementation, with the Kenyan authorities suspending the Rainforest Alliance within the nation on the finish of May because of the reported prices that it was imposing on smallholders.
At the time, the Alliance mentioned that it was working with the Kenyan Department of Agriculture to “gain clarity and to work towards a joint resolution quickly”. But 4 months later, the accreditation has but to be reinstated.
The affect of Fairtrade is held again, nonetheless, by the truth that after 30 years of the motion, a big variety of tea manufacturers should not signed up. The Co-op, M&S, Clipper, and Waitrose are among the many most excessive profile manufacturers who’ve. Global cut-through is even weaker, with even simply these few UK manufacturers representing greater than half of the worldwide Fairtrade tea market.
At Iriaini, lower than one per cent of tea offered final yr was truly offered as Fairtrade – although 100 per cent of the tea produced qualifies as Fairtrade. Tetley and different manufacturers have additionally sourced tea from Iriaini, based on their suppliers lists.
A spokesperson for Tetley-owner Tata Consumer Products mentioned that it considered certification as “a baseline in our commitment to sustainable and ethical sourcing”, including that it does have some Fairtrade-accredited smaller tea manufacturers in its porfolio. Gareth Mead, from PG Tips proprietor Lipton, mentioned that the corporate “admire[s] Fairtrade’s ambition”, however he raises considerations about there being ample portions of Fairtrade tea to satisfy the wants of PG Tips, including that he has had conversations with Fairtrade about “how sufficient volumes of tea can be grown to their requirements”.
Fairtrade’s Eleanor Harrison has little time for any suggestion that sure manufacturers could possibly be ill-suited to the certification. “If they want to be Fairtrade, then it is very much possible,” she says. “When you go to these Fairtrade farms, you see the impact. [Companies] can play an incredible role lifting millions of tea growers out of poverty.”
At a time the place price of residing pressures proceed to have an effect on hundreds of thousands of individuals, it could possibly be argued {that a} motion like Fairtrade might battle to chop via.
But Harrison factors to latest polling carried out by Kantar for Fairtrade which means that 75 per cent of British shoppers suppose its necessary that tea manufacturers present clear details about costs paid to producers. Data additionally reveals that Fairtrade espresso gross sales elevated 5 per cent final yr, whereas gross sales of Fairtrade juice, sugar, and wine all additionally grew. There are at present some two million farmers around the globe benefitting from Fairtrade – and the motion has most just lately been buoyed by Sainsbury’s deciding this summer season to certify its own-brand tea as Fairtrade.
Ruth Cranston, director of sustainability at Sainsbury’s, instructed The Independent that the shift ought to ship an extra £1,000,000 yearly in Fairtrade Premium to farmers, whereas additionally “reassuring customers” that the grocery store is delivering “meaningful benefits” to tea-growing communities.
But even within the UK, a rustic with a tradition steeped in tea that has quite a few organisations pushing moral consumption, solely 10 per cent of gross sales of tea are Fairtrade.
For famers squeezed by the local weather disaster and poverty, although, even that may make a distinction.
This article was produced as a part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid undertaking
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/climate-change-africa-kenya-tea-fairtrade-b2828665.html