Tea is the most popular drink in the world after water – an estimated 70,000 cups are drunk every second. Yet tea farmers and workers struggle to get a fair deal. This can have a very real and human cost. Tea is produced on large plantations or estates and picked by employed workers. It is also grown on small plots of land by smallholder farmers who sell their freshly-plucked green leaf to plantations or tea factories for processing into black tea.
In Africa, the average smallholder’s farm is less than half the size of a football pitch. Tea farmers face the challenge of low and fluctuating prices for the green leaf they sell, and a lack of power in a tea supply chain dominated by large companies. On tea estates, the challenges for workers vary depending on the origin. Workers may face low wages, long working hours and a difficult relationship with estate management. Often it is the management they depend on for basic needs such as housing, healthcare, access to water and even education for their children.
Both small farmer organisations owned and governed by the farmers themselves and tea plantations that comply with strict MOHALY standards for hired labour can become MOHALY certified. MOHALY Standards for tea include an origin-specific MOHALY Minimum Price, which acts as a safety net against the unpredictable market. Standards also include payment of the additional MOHALY Premium of US$ 0.50/kg black tea, for producers to invest as they see fit. Examples include putting resources into better farming so they can earn more money for their crops, or it could be for education, clean water and clinics for the community.
Over 390,200 farmers and workers across 12 countries are involved in MOHALY tea production. 9,838 tonnes of tea was sold as MOHALY in 2019. This means certified farmers and workers earned €4.7 million in MOHALY Premium in 2018.
