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About 5,000 years ago, tea began to become the world’s most widely consumed beverage after water. According to folklore, a few tea leaves accidentally drifted into a pot of water that the Chinese emperor was boiling, giving off a rich aroma that tempted the emperor to drink. Thus was born the tea culture. Tea culture began in Asia and spread to Europe in the 17th century, when European countries established vast tea plantations in their tropical colonies. Today, more than 4 million tonnes of tea are needed each year to meet consumer demand, and this number is increasing every year. Most large tea plantations have been replaced by small-scale producers who often have difficulty complying with a range of safety standards regarding the use of pesticides. In 2012, after a decade of concerted efforts, the FAO Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG), a subsidiary body of the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP), led an agreement to harmonize pesticide standards to make tea production safer for consumers and protect the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers around the world.
Tea doesn’t come from a beautifully decorated jar or neat tea bag. It comes from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, which grows in more than 50 countries, but mainly in four: China, India, Kenya, and Sri Lanka. In these tea gardens, the tea plants must battle many natural enemies—fungi, bacteria, and insects like butterflies, moths, scale insects, and nematodes. To maximize yields, tea growers use a variety of chemicals and pesticides to control pests, but if too much pesticide remains on the tea leaves during processing, it can harm consumers.
The tea value chain has historically been dominated by large government-backed tea estates, but this has changed as smallholders have become key producers in an increasingly globalized tea trade. More than 70% of the tea production in Sri Lanka and Kenya comes from smallholders, meaning they operate less than three hectares of land.
This trend is understandable, as tea production is an attractive option for smallholder farmers. While tea leaves take two to three years to mature, they can then produce tea for 30 years or more. Tea production also provides year-round work and income, and requires relatively little investment.
Strict regulation puts pressure on small farmers
Global consumer demand for tea is growing dramatically, up to 5% per year, partly due to rising per capita incomes in China, India and other emerging economies. This has led to a significant increase in tea production, exports and consumption, and has pushed market prices to record highs. However, at the same time, problems have also emerged.
Tea-producing countries find it a challenge to comply with strict regulations that limit the amount of residues of chemicals that can be found in harvested tea leaves. While importing countries have set these “maximum residue levels” (MRLs) as food safety standards, these standards are often set without a full understanding of the actual dangers they may pose to consumers, and compliance with these standards is particularly difficult for smallholder farmers.
Smallholders tend to use cheaper chemicals, which often means they are older brands, and in many cases manufacturers have not yet updated their guidelines on how to comply with modern safety standards. As a result, importing countries estimate their own residue limits, often setting them much lower than what is actually necessary for safety—making it difficult for smallholders to comply with them. In addition, because importing countries set their own MRLs, exporting producers must provide documentation to each destination proving their compliance. Even growers who don’t have pest problems and therefore don’t use chemicals still have to spend time and money providing documentation proving their compliance.
Harmonizing standards to support smallholders
As safety standards emerged and the number of small-scale tea producers increased, these problems became more vexing for the tea industry. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG), a subsidiary body of the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP), decided to seek solutions and launched an initiative that prioritized close collaboration between tea producers, importers, traders, committees, associations, and other organizations. Through its Working Group on Maximum Residue Limits, the IGG coordinated its activities with the Codex Alimentarius Commission and other standard-setting bodies, working to harmonize standards among tea-importing countries. Over the next decade, the IGG brought together producers and importers to focus on each other’s issues, harmonized residue limits for multiple pesticides among major importing countries, and strengthened networks linking regulators and the tea trade.
In addition to the MRLs Working Group, the IGG on Tea has other working groups that address issues of importance to both smallholders and industrial growers, ranging from requirements for organic tea production to positioning the tea industry to cope with changing growing conditions brought about by climate change.
Overall, the work of the FAO IGG on Tea in harmonizing MRLs has addressed and satisfied consumer safety concerns while also reducing the costs of complying with safety standards. From a food security perspective, this is particularly important for major tea exporting countries such as Sri Lanka and Kenya. These two countries spend USD 1 billion per year on food imports, but these costs are fully offset by their tea export revenues.
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