How tea is made and traded

Introduction

Tea production employs an estimated 13 million people, nine million of whom are smallholder farmers, while the remainder work in tea estates – with millions more reliant on their incomes. In China, Sri Lanka and Kenya, which account for half of the world’s tea production, the majority of tea is produced by smallholder farmers. Millions more are employed in or dependent on tea processing, transporting, trading and retailing.

What is tea?

There are two main varieties of the evergreen, tropical plant that produces tea; Camellia sinensis –  which is indigenous to China – and Camellia assamica – which is indigenous to India.  (Other hot herbal and fruit drinks are not tea – they are herbal infusions.)

Tea (like wine) draws its flavour and colour from the soil and climate of the place where it is grown (its “terroir”). For example, the delicate flavour and colour of Darjeeling tea is hailed as the “Champagne of tea.” Kenyan tea is darker and has a stronger flavour that has become popular in the UK. In Japan, the specialty is fragrant green tea.

Tea thrives in warm, humid climates with at least 100 cm of rainfall a year. It likes deep, light, acidic and well-drained soil and will grow from sea level up to 2,100 meters above sea level. Tea is now grown in around 60 countries around the world, including several European countries.

Plantations

While in China, tea is traditionally grown on family farms, the colonial British tea industry was based on clearing forests and establising plantations. These provided employment and accommodation for thousands of families, usually from poorer parts of the country. But they also created large areas of monoculture that resrict both biodiversity and the development of alternative sources of income for the people that live there.

Plantations (also refered to as ‘gardens’ or ‘estates’) still exist and largely continue to operate in the same way as they did when they began nearly 200 years ago. Workers, adminisrative staff and managers and their families live on the plantation itself. They still follow a strict hierarchy, with a small number of managers ruling over a large workforce.

Traditionally, plantation management has assumed the responsibility for providing workers with housing, education and healthcare, and in many countries, the government has formalised this arrangement. This means that there is oversight of their living and working conditions (which are also subject to labour regulations), but it also means more control over them. The changing commercial environment also means that many plantations can’t afford to provide these benefits to a decent standard.

Smallholder farms

Smallholder tea farms are small plots of privately-owned land on which tea is grown, often alongside other crops. The number of smallholder farms has grown exponentially over the last few years, and the volume of tea they produce globally has now overtaken plantation-grown tea. They are farmed either by the family (with additional workers hired on a casual basis during high harvest seasons) or by permanently hired workers.

Smallholder farmers tend to have greater freedom and agency than plantation workers, but they shoulder more risk as their income is reliant on successful harvests which are vulernable to changes in climate and pest attacks. They are also less able to negotiate the price of their tea, unless formed into associations or cooperatives, as they predominantly are in Kenya.

Because they are numerous and can be scattered widely, there is often less oversight over issues such as domestic violence and child labour on smallholder farms. Casual workers hired for harvesting are usually not protected by labour laws to ensure that they have decent pay and living conditions.

How is it harvested?

If left to grow naturally, the tea “bush” will grow to become a tree (some abandoned tea estates have become tea forests). But when commercially cultivated it is pruned to remain as a bush approximately one meter high, for ease of plucking. Tea bushes take three to five years to come to maturity, but, unlike many other agricultural crops, tea can be harvested almost all year round.

Tea pluckers – the majority of  whom are women – move through the bushes plucking the leaves by hand, or with shears or knives. Ideally, they pluck just the top two leaves and a bud, and throw them into a basket or bag carried on their backs.

Plantation pluckers carry the filled baskets to a collection point to have them weighed. The amount each worker has plucked is recorded so that she can be paid accordingly. Smallholder tea farmers sell their tea to the factories of large plantations, or to independent factories.

A skilled plucker can gather up to between 30-35 kg of plucked leaf in a day, sufficient to produce about 7.5 to 9 kg of processed black tea. Increasingly, harvesting machines (mostly operated by men) are being used as they require fewer workers. The average output of a harvesting machine – which can be operated by two or three people – is between 50 and 350 kg per day, but many machines are unable to pluck as selectively as the human hand, often (though not always) resulting in lower quality tea.

How are green leaves made into finished tea?

At the factory, the plucked leaf is spread on large trays or racks and left to wither in warm air causing the moisture in the leaf to evaporate. Machines then break the withered leaf so that its juices, or enzymes, are released.  

The broken leaf is laid out in a cool, humid atmosphere for 3-4 hours to ferment, or oxidise, until it turns a golden russet colour. After oxidisation, the leaf is dried by being passed slowly through hot air chambers where all the moisture is evaporated and the leaf turns a dark brown or black.

To make green tea, the withered leaf is steamed and rolled before drying or firing. For oolong the oxidisation period is cut down to half the time. White or Silver Tip tea is made from leaf buds covered in a light down that gives them a silvery appearance.

Made tea is sorted into different grades by being passed through a series of wire mesh sifts before being weighed and packed into chests or sacks to be transported to where they will be sold.

Tea brands mostly sell a blend of teas so that they can maintain a constant quality, character and flavour.  Skilled tea tasters check the quality of the tea, assess its value and to create blends.

How is tea traded?

Tea is very much a global commodity, grown in over 60 countries and consumed worldwide, although its popularity in traditional markets such as the UK is being overtaken by countries like Turkey and Pakistan, and by domestic consumption in tea-producing countries such as China and India.

The auction system

In many countries, processed tea is sold through auction. From the plantation or farm, it is transported to warehouses where auction brokers value and catalogue the teas and manage the auction process.

The first tea auction was held in 1679 in London by the East India Company, which not only had a monopoly on British trade with India and the Far East, but was also responsible for the government of much of the Indian sub-continent. Today, the colonial-era auction system is still in place.

The auction system means that tea producers are unable to dictate the price of their product. The predominance of a small number of very large buyers (an “oligopsony”) means that even auction prices are kept low. As a result, producers may not earn enough to enable them to provide decent wages and working conditions for their workers. Sometimes the price they get doesn’t even cover the cost of producing the tea.

Private sales

Some producers prefer to deal directly with packers, who feel this enables them to build stronger relationships with them. Private sales also  allow for long-term contracts which strengthens the connection between consumers and producers – something that is especially important for packers promoting ethical or environmental sustainability. It can also mean better prices for producers, but often even private sale prices are pegged to auction prices.

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Sources:

UK Tea and Infusions Association – Tea growing and production
UK Tea and Infusions Association – Tea processing and blending
THIRST 2022. Human Rights in the Tea Sector – The Big Picture: Human rights in principle and practice
THIRST 2023. Human Rights in the Tea Sector – The Big Picture: Root Causes of Breaches
The Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka – Development and introduction of a motorized selective tea harvester for tea lands in Sri Lanka