Uddhab Chandra Sarmah
(ucsarmah@gmail.com)
The tea industry, which has thrived for centuries, is facing significant challenges due to climate change, which has been exhibited mostly in recent times.
These challenges include rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events, all of which affect both the quantity and quality of tea production. To ensure the sustainability of the tea industry, both in terms of production and maintaining quality, several adaptive measures can be taken:
1. Climate-Resilient Cultivation Practices:
Diversified crop varieties: breeding or adopting tea varieties that are more resilient to heat, drought, and fluctuating rainfall patterns can help mitigate the impact of climate change.
Agroforestry: Integrating trees into tea plantations can help create microclimates, reduce soil erosion, and provide shade, thereby protecting tea plants from extreme weather conditions.
Water management: Efficient irrigation systems such as drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, and building reservoirs can help manage water scarcity during dry spells.
Soil health management: Ensuring healthy soil through organic farming practices, composting, and mulching can enhance the resilience of tea plantations to climate stressors.
2. Sustainable agricultural practices:
Organic and regenerative farming: Reducing the use of chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides) can improve soil health, biodiversity, and the long-term sustainability of tea estates. Pest and disease management: Climate change can exacerbate pest outbreaks. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approaches, which combine biological controls, crop rotation, and minimal use of chemical pesticides, can help.
Precision agriculture: Using technologies like drones, soil sensors, and satellite imagery can help tea growers monitor plant health, optimise inputs, and minimise wastage.
3. Adapting to market demands:
Focus on quality over quantity: With production volumes potentially declining due to climate issues, tea producers can focus on premium-quality teas, catering to niche markets that value unique flavours and ethical sourcing.
Certification and sustainable branding Certifications like Fair Trade, Rainforest: Alliance, and organic labels can enhance the market value of tea by assuring consumers of environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices.
Diversification of products: Expanding the product portfolio by creating value-added tea products (like tea blends, herbal infusions, or ready-to-drink teas) can diversify income streams and reduce dependence on traditional tea varieties.
4. Collaboration and Research:
Investment in research: Governments and tea associations can fund research on climate-resilient tea varieties, sustainable farming techniques, and climate forecasting tools to
support farmers in adapting to changing conditions.
Farmer education: Providing training to smallholders on climate-smart agriculture practices will be key to ensuring that these strategies are widely adopted.
5. Policy and Financial Support:
Government policies: Governments in tea-growing regions can play a key role by providing subsidies for adopting climate-resilient practices, offering insurance schemes against climate risks, and fostering innovation through research grants.
Financial assistance: Access to financial support for small-scale farmers, such as climate adaptation loans or microfinancing, can help them invest in necessary infrastructure and technology to cope with climate-related challenges.
6. Community-led Solutions:
Cooperative farming: Small-scale tea growers can form cooperatives to share resources and knowledge, making it easier to implement large-scale sustainable farming methods and access markets collectively.
Early warning systems: Communities can work together to develop local early-warning systems for extreme weather events, allowing them to prepare and protect their crops.
By combining these measures—ranging from the adoption of climate-resilient farming practices to market adaptations and policy support—it can be ascertained that the dilapidated, old tea industry can better manage the impacts of climate change and secure its future sustainability.