Tea News Update

Summary

This month’s tea news shows technology, policy and climate action reshaping the sector, while workers still bear the heaviest risks. Innovations range from an intelligent harvesting machine in China and India’s first tea-specific AI tool to digitised wage payments in Malawi. These are welcome where they raise earnings rather than replace pluckers.

Gender-based violence and harassment persists, with an estate manager in Assam arrested for alleged sexual assault. A UK parliamentary delegation joined a roundtable in Bangladesh on violence against women, and a study of a Sri Lankan plantation’s health programme found that management, not women workers, decides what their needs are.

Government measures drew mixed reactions: Kenya’s tea levy faces calls for suspension, Bangladesh’s plan to reclassify tea as agriculture raises concerns for workers’ rights, and Nepal’s growers want more support.

Wild animals, accidents and a lack of doctors on many tea plantations continue to endanger workers, with 63 deaths and 192 injuries reported since February 2025.

Bonus season has again brought unrest. Kenyan farmers protested low payments, while in India unpaid bonuses and wages led to blockades, manager arrests and abandoned gardens. This reinforces that the “bonus” is effectively a deferred wage.

Innovative, low-cost climate solutions offered hope, from natural farming in Taiwan to vetiver terraces in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the pros and cons of e-auctions are debated in India where Assam’s second auction centre is welcomed and Nepal sees establishing its own auction centre as necessary for the survival of its tea industry.

New technology touches every part of the tea sector

Technological innovations are touching every part of the tea industry – including harvesting, wage payments, auctions and farm management. Where this lightens workers’ loads and increases their productivity so that they can increase their earnings towards a living income level, rather than putting pluckers with no job alternatives out of work, they are welcome developments.

Farm management is being enhanced in China and India. In China, an intelligent harvesting machine has been developed for premium tea plantations in Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces. It uses machine vision and a picking mechanism modelled on the human hand to selectively harvest spring and autumn buds on flat and gently sloping land. It responds to rising labour costs and an ageing workforce, and future models are expected to be lighter with multiple robotic arms. (China Daily, 5 October 2026)

Meanwhile, India‘s Tea Research Association (TRA) has launched TocklAI, the country’s first AI tool designed specifically for tea. Drawing on thousands of scientific papers, it aims to help growers, especially small farmers, with pest control, soil health and climate adaptation, as part of a wider push to keep Indian tea globally competitive. (News Bytes, 8 October 2026)

India is also looking at how technology can enhance auctions. India’s Tea Board held a seminar in Kolkata on the pros and cons of the e-auction process. Deputy Chairman C Murugan said the Board is implementing reforms based on recent studies and auctioneers’ input, aiming to remove entry barriers for buyers and improve service to consumers. (Millennium Post, 5 October 2026)

Wages is another area to potentially benefit from technological advances; the Tea Association of Malawi Limited (TAML) is digitising wage payments across the tea industry, starting with estates in Thyolo and Mulanje. It is working with the Better Than Cash Alliance, a UN-based partnership, with the aim of improving productivity and livelihoods for smallholders and workers, particularly women. (STIR, 24 September 2026)

Abuse continues alongside efforts to tackle GBVH in tea sector

An assistant manager of a tea estate in Assam, India, was arrested last month after a woman worker accused him of sexually assaulting her at his bungalow. The woman claims she was asked to go to the assistant manager’s bungalow for cleaning and other work and that the accused tried to force himself on her and sexually assaulted her. (The Times of India, 30 September 2026)

As THIRST and our partner organisations Women Working Worldwide have shown in our 2023 paper ‘Consent… The risk factors for GBVH in the tea sector’, women across the tea sector are at high risk of this kind of abuse, and that the structures and norms of tea plantations exacerbate the risk.

It is heartening, therefore, to learn that a UK parliamentary delegation, led by All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Bangladesh Chair Apsana Begum, MP, participated in a roundtable organised by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), to discuss violence against women and girls, alongside other human rights issues such as access to legal redress, labour rights and minority advocacy. The delegation met representatives of the Sylhet Bar Association, legal experts and tea garden workers during the consultation. (BSS News, 14 October 2026)

This month also saw the publication of an academic paper examining how a “Right to Health” corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme in a Sri Lankan tea plantation governs women workers’ reproductive lives. It looks at the company’s health programme for women tea workers, finding that while women value the care they receive, management still decides what their needs are and how progress is measured. Workers’ health concerns are reframed as business goals. Pregnancies, births and attendance become numbers, while problems workers raise, such as travel time for breastfeeding, the cost of the recommended diet and disrespect, appear only as side notes. Reports go up to head office, the government and international audiences, while workers’ views reach decision-makers only through estate staff. The authors link this to colonial patterns of control over a largely Tamil, female workforce. (SSRN, 23 October 2026).

These colonial-era dynamics emerged in the THIRST’s human rights impact assessment of the tea sector as a powerful underlying factor in many of the human rights breaches that, sadly, persist in the industry. On November 25^th – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – THIRST and Women Working Worldwide publish their follow up to the ‘Consent…’ report, Behind the Brew. This will assess the progress made by the tea industry towards ending violence against women in the three years since the last report and the legal and media exposés that triggered it.

Mixed views on government measures to manage tea sector

Governments across tea producing regions are always looking for ways to strengthen their tea industries. But these efforts are not always uniformly welcomed as is evident in this month’s news items.

As reported in THIRST’s June, July and August Tea News Updates, the Kenyan government introduce a 0.8 per cent tea levy which it said was aimed at raising revenue to invest in smallholder farmers. But Githunguri MP Gathoni Wamuchomba has called for the immediate suspension of the levy saying that government assurances had proved hollow, with the burden being pushed back to growers through reduced buying prices and shrinking bonuses. (Mount Kenya Times, 9 October 2026). Tea farmers have this month added their voices to the demands to scrap the levy after receiving disappointing annual bonuses. Growers and factory directors in the two counties say the payments for the 2025/2026 financial year fell short of what rising costs demanded. They blame taxes, higher regulatory charges and global trade disruptions for shrinking their returns. (Sacco Review, 14 October 2026). Some tea farmers are threatening to uproot their tea bushes and switch to alternative crops following disappointing returns. (Kenya News, 9 October 2026). Separately, KTDA subsidiary Chai Trading Company Limited unveiled a five-year plan, including a new warehouse complex due in 2027, to cut warehousing costs and increase returns to farmers (People Daily, 18 October 2026).

The Sri Lankan Government offers a fertiliser subsidy, but the country’s National Tea Planters’ Association reports that around half of the plantation owners, particularly those from the younger generation, are not registering for it due to the procedures and commitments involved, while the deteriorating profitability of the tea industry is also pushing young people away from plantation work towards the garment sector. (The Morning, 1 October 2026)

Bangladesh‘s government outlined financial, technological and policy reforms to revive a tea sector struggling with ageing plantations, rising costs and loan defaults (Daily Sun, 17 October 2026); However, speakers at a consultation last month urged the government to reconsider its plan to classify Bangladesh’s tea industry as an agricultural sector, warning that the move could undermine workers’ rights and welfare and have wider implications for land ownership and the future of the industry. They also called for a transparent and inclusive restructuring process involving tea workers, trade unions, owners, relevant government agencies and independent experts. (United News of Bangladesh, 7 October 2026)

Meanwhile, Nepal’s tea growers are calling on their government to give it more attention and support; tea entrepreneur Kushal Niraula says “The government has not been able to pay much attention to the tea sector, which can make a good contribution to the economy by bringing in foreign currency… There is a need for an effective campaign at the farmer level to produce pesticide-free tea.” According to Nepal News, Niraula’s statement connects with the problems that the country’s tea sector has been facing for a long time. Maintaining the quality of production, organizing the relationship between farmers and the industry, meeting international standards, and searching for competitive markets have not been able to move forward together. Unable to gain the expected benefit from production, market uncertainty is felt from farmers to the processing industry. (Nepal News, 22 October 2026)

In India, A high-level meeting was held to position Assam as a leading horticulture state, offering farmers the opportunity to secure a “guaranteed income” of up to Rs 50,000 [approx. US$570] per bigha through Oil Palm cultivation. Tea plantations will be supplied with saplings of litchi, dragon fruit, and areca nut, and starting next year, 5 crore horticultural saplings will be distributed annually to the farming community across the state. (ANI, 26 October 2026)

Real and continuous danger to tea workers and their children

The tally of injuries and deaths of tea workers from wild animals and accidents continues to rise – including a report this month that M Duraisamy, a 59-year-old tea plantation worker in South India, was killed by a wild elephant while walking to the tea factory for night duty in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. Forest officials gave his family ₹50,000 (about US$570) in immediate financial assistance and said they had been monitoring elephant movements in the area. (The New Indian Express, 26 October 2026). A young tea garden worker in Assam was more fortunate – although she was left paralysed and struggling to breathe after a suspected neurotoxic snakebite on her foot, timely airway management and prolonged ventilation in a private ICU saved her life, with the cost of intensive care covered by the Venom Army network and community crowdfunding (North East Now, 23 September 2026).

She was particularly fortunate to benefit from both the financial and medical support. The Sentinel reports that although the Plantations Labour Act, 1951* requires tea estate managements to provide and maintain medical facilities, including qualified doctors, many of Assam’s 807 tea estates have none. The article says that as of July, there were only 272 resident doctors across the state’s estates, plus 243 visiting doctors. Without a doctor on site, workers injured in tea factory accidents, or pluckers bitten by insects and snakes, must be rushed to health centres that are often far away. The lost time puts their lives at risk, and emergencies at night are especially dangerous because families struggle to transport patients out of the garden. The failure to appoint doctors leaves workers at serious risk. (The Sentinel, 19 October 2026). *NB the PLA has been replaced by new labour codes which allow estates to meet medical duties through ESI or government schemes.

Reports of injuries and deaths of tea workers frequently appear in THIRST’s news updates. While the figures – 63 killed, including four children, and 192 injured since February 2025 – may not be comprehensive since they only reflect what has been reported in English language news outlets, they point to real and continuous danger to life and limb for tea workers and their children. Where these deaths and injuries are driven by unsafe transport, low pay and estate closures or lack of access to adequate medical treatment, the industry and governments can and should prevent them. Tackling the risk from wild animals is more difficult but should not therefore be ignored. It’s a genuine workplace hazard for tea workers and needs to be tackled in a way that safeguards both humans and animals.

It’s industrial unrest over unpaid, underpaid or delayed bonus payments season again

It’s bonus season again. Which means it’s industrial unrest over unpaid, underpaid or delayed bonus payments season again. The underlying concept of this payment being a “bonus” needs to be re-examined. From the worker or farmer’s perspective this is just a part of their wage for which they must wait until the end of the year, often getting into debt in the meantime. For their employers it is the safety buffer against sustaining losses in a challenging market, at a time when production costs are constantly rising.

In Kenya, smallholder farmers are bearing the cost of market shocks they did nothing to cause. The 2025/2026 second payment is lower than the previous year’s, after disruption to the tea market that included the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States (Sacco Review, 30 September 2026). Farmers supplying Litein Tea Factory stopped plucking and protested a Sh18 [approx. US$0.14] bonus, threatening further action if their concerns were not addressed (YouTube, 5 October 2026). Farmers supplying Thumaita Tea Factory demanded a government refund of Ksh117 million [approx. US$0.9 million] deducted from their earnings for fertiliser, saying unpaid subsidies had reduced their bonuses (People Daily, 17 October 2026). Factory declarations elsewhere have ranged from Sh12.50 to Sh50 [approx. US$0.10 to US$0.39] per kg. For smallholders, this so-called bonus can decide whether a household meets its expenses or carries debt into the next season, which makes it plainly part of their income rather than an extra (Pulse, 9 October 2026).

In India, the same pattern shows how much workers depend on the payment. Workers at Andrew Yule’s 10 Assam estates secured a 20 per cent bonus for 2025-26 only after weeks of uncertainty and negotiation (The Assam Tribune, 2 October 2026). In North Bengal, around four lakh workers on nearly 300 estates are expected to share Rs 300–400 crore [approx. US$34–45 million], and traders expect much of it to be spent on clothes, food and household essentials for the festival (ETV Bharat, 9 October 2026). Yet workers on closed Dooars estates are still waiting for assistance under the FAWLOI scheme, and those on several working gardens have not received their bonus (The Statesman, 9 October 2026). There were also blockades in western Dooars against bonus payment in two instalments (The Telegraph India, 11 October 2026); The state government has approved a one-time Puja payment of Rs 5,000 [approx. US$57] and 50 kg of rice for 19,524 workers of 21 gardens closed since January 2023, who receive neither wages nor bonus (The Times of India, 14 October 2026).

Police in Alipurduar arrested the managers of five Merico-owned estates after protests over unpaid bonuses, while the management of Bharnobari tea estate abandoned the garden overnight, leaving around 1,300 permanent workers facing an uncertain future (The Telegraph India, 18 October 2026). One of the owners of another abandoned plantation, Jay Birpara, claimed that the reason they left was that during protests about unpaid wages and bonuses “Three female workers tried to set the senior manager on fire” (The Telegraph India, 12 October 2026).

Discontent has spread across North Bengal, with protests and road blockades. Owners and unions say the Labour department’s 20 per cent directive was issued without consulting them, and 50 to 60 struggling gardens have yet to pay the previous year’s 10 per cent bonus. Union leaders argue that the owners, not the managers, should be held responsible, and report that workers in many gardens have gone one to two months without daily wages (Millenium Post, 23 October 2026). Other protests this month included: a nine-and-a-half-hour blockade by the closed Madhu estate’s workforce over unpaid state assistance (The Telegraph India, 9 October 2026); a demonstration at Majherdabri against a proposed medical college on garden land (The Telegraph India, 15 October 2026); and a human chain at three Duncan Brothers gardens in Moulvibazar, Bangladesh, demanding full festival allowances (New Age, 16 October 2026).

The pressing need for systemic change in the sector is evident as the Terai Indian Planters’ Association warns that 15 to 20 more tea gardens could face closure as a cash crunch, compounded by the payment of a 20 per cent bonus, threatens north Bengal’s tea industry. “The present situation in the entire industry is extremely alarming, with stagnant prices, lower exports, rising costs and other external factors”. (The Telegraph India, 2 October 2026)

When even basic wages go unpaid, the line between “bonus” and wage disappears altogether.

Small, but transformational changes help tea tackle climate impacts

Tea producers around the world are struggling in the face of climate impacts. But this month has seen a slew of heartening stories about people – from individual farmers to intergovernmental organisations – making small but highly transformational changes in the tea sector that are helping to mitigate climate impacts and make tea more environmentally friendly.

Taiwanese tea grower Lin Kuang-li switched to natural farming 30 years ago, abandoning pesticides and chemical fertilisers. He now plants alfalfa among his tea bushes as green manure, and says his soil absorbs and drains water better, softening the impact of both drought and heavy rain. He rarely uses his irrigation system, believing tea plants must experience some stress to adapt to the climate and resist disease. The first three years were hard, with pests damaging his crop, but the ecosystem gradually rebalanced as predators returned and healthier plants developed thicker, pest-deterring waxy layers. “You have to let the tea plant adapt to the climate. If it does not have the ability to withstand stress, it can easily become diseased and die…Pest insects initially destroyed my tea plants,” he says. “But with patience, the balance of the ecosystem gradually returned. Predators arrived to kill the pests. And a healthy tea plant produces a thicker waxy layer that pests are less attracted to.”  (Mongabay, 26 October 2026)

Drawing on 25 years of tea cultivation experience, farmer Ratan Ray in India, has built a low-cost tea-processing machine from household appliances, recognising that small growers struggle to afford industrial machinery. He fitted specially designed metal blades inside an old pressure cooker and connected it to a mixer-grinder motor, allowing him to crush, tear and curl tea leaves into small pellets, replicating key stages of the CTC method. His innovation offers an affordable alternative for small tea growers with limited resources. (Indian Council of Agricultural Research)

Smallholder tea farmers in Kenya are running their own seedling nurseries with support from Solidaridad (Southern Africa)’s Pathways to Prosperity (P2P) Tea Project, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Begun as a pilot, the scheme has grown into a scalable way of tackling limited access to quality planting material. Many farmers had relied on ageing bushes with lower yields, greater vulnerability to pests and disease, and poor resilience to dry spells and erratic rainfall. Improved seedlings from the Tea Research Foundation and private estates were costly and hard to obtain because of distance and limited supply. (Farmers Review Africa, 16 October 2026)

A field experiment at Kenilworth Estate in Ginigathhena, in Sri Lanka‘s central highlands, has measured how much fertiliser heavy monsoon rain washes off steep tea slopes. Combining stone terraces with vetiver grass reduced losses of dissolved nitrogen by about 78 per cent, phosphorus by 80 per cent and potassium by 86 per cent, compared with tea grown without conservation measures. The study shows that farmers on mid-elevation slopes can protect their soil with simple, low-cost methods, keeping most of the nutrients they pay for on the land and reducing pollution of the waters below. (Bioengineer, 4 October 2026)

A recovery project by the ILO, supported by Japan’s Social Safety Net Fund has helped to repair a natural forest spring in Sri Lanka that supplied water to around 2,000 tea plantation workers and their families after it was destroyed by last November’s Cyclone Ditwah. The project was implemented by the Uva Shakthi Foundation with essential technical guidance provided by the Plantation Human Development Trust (PHDT). Browns Plantations contributed piping worth LKR 600,000 [approx. US$2,000], alongside the ILO’s investment of about LKR 2.1 million [approx. US$7,000]. (International Labour Organization, 17 October 2026)

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has proposed new maximum residue limits for two pesticides in tea, acetamiprid and imidacloprid, with the limit for one set lower than those in the United States and Japan. Announced by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on 17 October 2026, the draft would permit up to 20 mg/kg of acetamiprid and 50 mg/kg of imidacloprid. The aim is to give farmers, manufacturers and regulators clearer standards. Published in the Gazette of India on 16 October, the limits are still proposals and do not reflect actual residue levels in tea sold in India. (Health and Me, 18 October 2026)

Auctions here to stay for better or for worse?

Auctions are a long-standing and sometimes controversial feature of the tea industry – unlike its cousins the coffee and cocoa industries. Opinions differ about whether auctions help support the industry, ensuring the best prices and providing producers with access to markets or whether they are in effect skewed towards the small number of large buyers that use them and leave producers as powerless price takers.

Tea auctions have been firmly established in in India since colonial times and this month, the Tea Board has held a seminar on the pros and cons of the e-auction process. deputy chairman, C.Murugan, said this reform is intended to “ensure there is no entry barrier for buyers as Tea Board wants to provide better service to the tea consumers.” (Millenium Post, 5 October 2026). Also this month, the Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association (ATTSA) welcomed the opening of the State’s second tea auction centre, the Assam Chai Bazaar, in the tea city of Dibrugarh but has simultaneously demanded that the employment opportunities emerging from the new platform should be reserved substantially for educated and eligible youths from tea-growing communities. (Assam Tribune, 3 October 2026).

Meanwhile, in Nepal, arguments are being put forwardfor introducing a tea auction system which, analysts say “is closely linked to the very survival of the country’s tea industry…” The article argues that “A well-managed auction system can improve payment reliability, giving growers greater confidence to invest in tea cultivation. Auctions can also increase international awareness by providing a platform for new buyers to discover and trade Nepali tea. Together, these benefits can strengthen market access, quality, farmer incentives, and the long-term competitiveness of Nepal’s tea industry”. (The Rising Nepal, 9 October 2026)