Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

It’s World Fair Trade Day 2011 this weekend. This year’s motto is Fair Trade Your World which I believe to mean something like ‘use your influence as consumer to move producers to embrace fair trade practices’. This is a good thing and I strongly believe in sharing the profit from retailing more evenly with the producers.

A very good series of 3 posts on the always fantastic Cha Dao Blog (part I, part II, part III) transcribes a conversation between tea blogger Cinnabar and tea garden consultant Nigel Melican. Nigel has been in the tea industry for decades and has been involved in consulting tea producers in many countries. In this conversation, he shares his views on the topics of sustainability, organic farming and fairtrade; views that are informed through a vast amount of experience with tea. Amongst other topics, the interviewer and Nigel were sharing their views on labels from certification organizations like Tansfair (and Rainforest Alliance, etc). Generally, their views reflect our own take on this subject. 

I believe that most of the certification labels act as little more than marketing methods. A certified, labelled tea should - in theory - sell better than an unlabelled one; and often does. But apart from the problem that tea gardens often aren’t audited after the initial certification is given, there is the big problem of affordability. In countries like China, where tea is often not grown on big tea farms (like in India and Sri Lanka, for example), small-hold tea farmers cannot afford the cost involved with certification. Unless they group together into a cooperative or umbrella organization, they might grow organic tea but will never get certified.

This is where I trust more in my direct business relationships. I know my growers and their practices. We offer fair trade teas, but the label is far less important to me than the knowledge of the actual application of the fair trade practices the growers or cooperatives use. For example, Doke Tea Estate, producer of our wonderful Doke Bai Mu Dan (yes, we’re getting this tea back; the harvest should happen pretty soon!), supports the Indus Foundation (which is dedicated to educate tea garden children) with $5 for every kilo of tea sold. Or our Yunnan Ancient Green Tea Yin Hao Osmanthus, Mini Tuocha and ‘Palace’ pu-erhs come from a cooperation of small-hold Chinese tea farms that grouped together to gain more power in promoting their organic and fair trade practices.
The contact and dialog with the producers is an important part of our business and we can pass on the certainty of ‘fair business practice’ to you.

Let’s raise our cups to Fair Trade (the concept, not a certification agency) and hope that the embrace of it will make this world a better place where profits are distributed more fairly.