Tea Board asks small growers to prune 25% area this month

Tea Board has come out with a proposal to help small growers manage their supply chain during the peak flush months (April to October).

Tea Board’s Executive Director M Balaji has advised small growers to subject 25 per cent of the tea area to pruning so that the green leaf they harvest during April-October would not be in excess or pull down prices.

He has listed triple benefits from such a pruning programme – small growers can supply quality green leaf to the factories, the factories can manufacture quality teas and the volume of teas sent to the market will not be in excess. In that scenario, prices of made tea are likely to increase and small growers would get reasonable returns, Balaji said.

This is a novel idea that reverses the long-time practice of harvesting a huge volume of green leaf during the flush season and flooding the factories with more raw material than required, making the factories manufacture teas day and night. Sometimes, while quantity goes up, quality comes down. When large volumes are sent to the market, prices decline.

The Tea Board believes that if its proposal to prune 25 per cent of the tea area is carried out, the supply chain will be manageable, resulting in better prices.

COMMENT NOW