Uddhab Chandra Sarmah
(ucsarmah@gmail.com)
It has been a matter of serious concern at present for the most prestigious and age-old tea industry in India to face the onslaught of survival rather than to follow up for long-term sustainability. The imbalance situation experienced over the past couple of years between the cost of production (CoP) and price realization per kg of tea has compelled both big and small tea producers to take hard decisions about disposing of some of their prized properties, even gradually, just to be free from all the liabilities and other outstanding debts. The situation is further aggravated by the trend of oversupply of production, causing serious imbalances of demand and supply, which have not only affected the prices of teas but also a huge quantity of left-over teas to be sold in subsequent years. As per the present statistics, the total production during the year 2019 shows around 1390 million kg of tea, which is about 60 million kg more than in 2018. Although it sounds very good that the production rate has been noticed to be increasing gradually, it has shown a direct effect in the price scenario owing to the less demand for the teas of consumers choice and, at the same time, accumulated left-over teas amounting to over 80–90 million kg from the previous years, which have aggravated the crisis in the present market scenario, which is not matching with the requirements of the total consumptions for both domestic and international markets. Unless domestic per capita consumption increases at least to over one kg of tea (presently 850 gm) in India, the imbalance of demand and supply will continue to be a serious problem as far as price factors are concerned.
The growth of tea production emerging from the segment of small tea growers has to be looked into as one of the prime areas of attention for the Indian tea industry. Today we have noticed that the productions from small tea growers in India have contributed over 52% of the total productions, and the same applies to the tea productions in Assam, where almost 47% of the total productions come from the segment of small tea growers. The green revolution, which started in the 1970s with a small number of 30–40 growers in Assam, has turned out to be around 1.8 lakh small tea growers in Assam, producing over 350 million kg of tea out of 700 million kg produced so far in 2019. The fantastic growth of small tea growers in Assam and in India as a whole will eventually take over 60% and more of the total production of the country in another 10 to 15 years of time. However, the main concern is about the quality of teas produced by this segment, which comes under the common medium brackets of tea markets, defying the past glory of Assam teas in the world markets!
This article is prepared to make an introspection in brief about the gradual erosion of the ‘QUALITY TEA PRODUCTIONS’ which have emerged as the most striking factors to have turned this most prestigious and glorified industry into the doldrums of ‘the’Very Critical Era’ of the industry. As this plantation industry is divided into ‘organized’ and ‘unorganised’ sectors contributing towards the overall productions of the country as a whole, we can examine both segments separately for such a situation that has arisen and threatened to erase the pride of Assam and Indian teas gradually!
ORGANISED ESTATES:
If we study the history of Assam tea gardens, we go back 200 years, since the inception of the tea industry under British rule. With their hard and sincere work, despite hundreds of hurdles and challenges, to establish the tea gardens in Assam, Darjeeling, Nilgiris, and Dooars, the Indian tea industry rose to a level of height as one of the best beverages next to water in the world. The 2nd flush of Assam teas had been considered the best value-added teas in the world, and teas harvested during this 2nd flush period, starting from the second week of May to the end of June, were mainly entirely meant for export to European countries only. The ‘Golden Era’ of this age-old industry continued till the over 80’s, but during the last four decades of time, we have seen a gradual decline both in crop and quality tea production at large, except for a few quality tea makers who are still holding the flag of the glory of Assam and Indian teas. Let us briefly analyse the causes behind these unfortunate situations.
1. As we all know, Assam in particular has over 900 gardens, of which over 60% are very old, and the rest also have some tea areas crossing the economic longevity period. There has been a gradual decline in productivity, which has been noticed over the years. The uneconomic areas in terms of productivity are around 30 to 35% of the total areas in Assam, and the same position is also noticed in other parts of the tea-growing areas of India. There should have been uprooting and replanting with good jats or clones every year so as to maintain areas of the estates in the age group within 50 years of age for both quality and productivity. But it is sad to mention that regular replacement and replanting had not been carried out by most of the big and small companies at the rate it should have been done and thus created a huge backlog of unproductive old tea areas, which are responsible for both quality and quantity production in total of Indian teas. Now most of the company gardens are in a situation where a minimum of 10–15% of the total old and uneconomic areas need to be uprooted and replanted per year, which turns out to be the most unpractical for implementations for various reasons best known to the producers, out of which the gestation periods of the newly planted areas to bring up the economic level become too long to wait after huge investments to be used for the areas to come up. Although some companies are doing around 2% per year, they have not been able to compensate for the losses of crop coming out of the existing non-economic areas of old tea areas. So the growth of the production is not visible to the extent it should have been reflected in the organised sectors, and at the same time, with the escalated cost of production per kg of tea made, the producers are finding it tough to produce the desired quality of product. Even the maintenance of the estate properties has been suffering miserably, which eventually affected the entire operational process of manufacture, right from field to factory.
2. It has been an accepted fact that gardens that have undertaken replanting even at a low rate of percentages are found mostly with the clones that generally fall under the ‘Quantity clone’ category; quality clones like S3A3, T3E3, S3A5,S3A5 or S3A1, which are bracketed under very good quality clones, are found to be noticed with very low percentages. Similarly, bi-clonal stocks of both quality and quantity are also found much less in newly planted areas. Earlier in the 1990s, when more emphasis was given to production, the producers went for replanting or extension planting of teas, mostly with clones like TV22, TV25, and TV26, which come under quantity clone brackets and appear to be easy to grow for production over a shorter period of time.
3. The main problem came when the industry had to lose some of the valuable sections of old tea bushes that were laden with inherent quality and specific characters to withstand climate change because of uprooting on a regular basis. It is unfortunate that the clonal selection programmeme, which used to be conducted by TRA earlier in the organised tes, has bee been discontinued, and at the same time, no efforts have been noticed to be carried out for this programmeme by individual estates before the sections get uprooted. This matter has not received as much attention as it should have been just to explore clones of high-quality, draft-resistant teas in the existing areas of the industry. As a result, most of the teas produced by the industry are of similar characters; competition for quality marks has been very tough, and finally, they are found to be falling into medium or good tea brackets at the highest price levels, which they sometimes find difficult to match with the production cost of the entire estate.
4. The entire industry is facing a big challenge to run the estate in proper conditions in matters of manpower management. The shortage of workers due to high absenteeism and many other problems related to the unpredictable climatic conditions coupled with political interferences, etc., have turned up as a major crisis for the industry to maintain a level of standard of production with quality. The industry, being the largest labour-oriented industry, has to depend on labour availability at the time when it is required to function during its peak growth period. It is a fact that over 60% of the total crop of any estate is produced during the period from July to October, and these 4 months come as the most critical months to maintain the desired standard of tea quality owing to the various challenges like adverse weather conditions and high absenteeism of workers to keep the plucking in order of desired rounds for making quality tea productions. Planters face innumerable problems not only to maintain the rounds but also because factory operations have to be run beyond their capacity for continuous flow of heavy crops for longer rounds of plucking.
5. Now anyone can imagine that actual value-added quality tea productions are confined to only about 40% of the total tea productions of any estate, which can be bracketed under the Good and Best Teas category, which fetch higher prices over Rs 250 and over on average. But the rest, which constitute over 60% of the total production, come under the medium or common tea brackets, whose sale prices are much below the cost of production. The serious attention that needs to be given to these most vital aspects of producing quality teas, right from the stages of raw materials to the finished products, does not get implemented due to the various constraints faced by the management most of the time. The estates that anticipate these incoming problems beforehand and take maximum care and attention do overcome the stress and are capable of manufacturing good-quality tea productions.
6. Earlier we learned that ‘Tea making is an art’, each factory was considered to be a kitchen, and the rule was that quality is made in the field and not in the factory, which supports the view that if the raw material is of good standard, obviously the cooking in the factory for the final product will be of good standard, and it implies the fact that plucking has to be of good standard with high percentages of fine leaf with very little damage. Gardens that resort to a high standard of plucking, having over 50 to 60% of fine leaf on average throughout the year, can easily survive by making high-quality teas at much higher prices.
7. Consumers are aware of quality teas and are prepared to purchase them at higher prices if they meet the standard of quality.
8. There has been a shift to produce teas more mechanically, converting all the traditional processes into mechanical ones by adopting an ‘online’ system of manufacture. This shift to mechanical processes has to be adopted because of the constraints of the availability of workers to complete the process on time and to cut the heavy cost, which used to entail big expenses to run the business. Although this process cuts a lot of manpower, the quality of the final products is a matter of concern when compared with the old traditional system.
(To be concluded)