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Kumaon’s new tea model for farmers
Summary
A lesser-known tea terroir is setting up an inclusive format to involve farmers in tea processing
There’s some exciting news from Kumaon and tea this week. A few years ago, I wrote about this region, a lesser-known tea terroir despite its older tea history. It’s here that the chapter on the British East India Company’s early experiments with tea begins. Tea had been planted in the mid-19th century but had languished from lack of access to a port. In the 1990s, when the state government sought the right crops to promote, tea came up as a resilient option that was also “primate-proof"—monkeys were not interested in this plant that bore no fruit, allowing it to grow and flourish.
That bit of trivia came from the website of Young Mountain Tea (YMT), whose US-based founder Raj Vable has been leading Kumaon tea’s revival. As a graduate student, Vable had visited Kumaon in 2010 to work with a non-profit and has since returned every year to work with the community. Tea revival was at a nascent stage then. He founded YMT in 2013 in the US to retail farmer-friendly organic tea sourced from India and Nepal. But at the heart of YMT lies Kumaon, its community and its tea revival.
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When Vable looked for ways to work with the community, he met with Desmond Birkbeck, a tea farmer from Champawat in Uttarakhand and now co-founder of Kumaon Tea. Together they began working on new styles of tea in what was traditionally a black tea producing region. Vable’s ask was for a white peony or bai mudan and Birkbeck delivered—it’s their signature tea today.
Early on, Vable realised that a tea farmer could earn greater value by making and processing tea as opposed to harvesting tea leaves and selling it to a factory. The idea of a factory was defined during the pandemic. But here’s what Vable and Birkbeck did differently. They decided to create a factory in Champawat that would be co-owned with the farmers, choosing an alternative approach to the plantation model which, in today’s times, finds itself on rather shaky legs.
In 2022, they presented the plan to the villagers who would be involved. In this farmer-owned factory model, which will begin production in September, 500 farmers from Champawat own 49% of the company. About 90% of the farmers are women, says Vable. The factory aims to produce orthodox and speciality tea, earning them at least four times the going price of green tea leaves. YMT will market and retail these with a portion of the profits going back to the farmers as dividend. The idea is that eventually the factory will be fully farmer owned. It calls for a new way of thinking, and a new style of cooperative setup. Vable has roped in Earthcraft, a Kumaon-based non-profit, to communicate the idea of this model so that the farmers understand what it means for them to be co-owners of the factory.
Funding for the factory came from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Frontier Co-op, a company engaged in sustainable sourcing of agri products, Acumen, which funds social enterprises, and Birkbeck. Every sale from YMT adds 1% to the factory funds. The factory is ready and production is set to start next month, bringing us a new tea range from a new terroir with an old story. If you’d like to try Kumaon Tea, email Birkbeck at teamakerscpt@gmail.com.
Tea Nanny is a fortnightly series on the world of tea. Aravinda Anantharaman is a tea drinker, writer and editor. She posts @AravindaAnanth1.
