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Sustainable Development Goals and Small Tea Growers of North-east Assam
Tea, the most popular beverage in the world, is also an important industry for the rural economy and acts as one of the contributors to the internationally agreed-upon Sustainable Development Goals. A number of small tea growers, who play an important role in the tea production process, are not registered under the Tea Board of India. Unlike these small growers, the big tea manufacturers have certain clauses and sections in their code of conduct that reflect their adherence to some of the SDGs like equality in wages, adopting sustainable agriculture methods, and more. Such a commitment to the SDGs was difficult for the small growers, who have now, however, channelised their efforts in this direction.
The definition of a smallholder or a small grower of tea differs across the globe. In most countries, the definition is based on the land size in which tea is cultivated. In Kenya, it means a tea grower cultivating in a small piece or pieces of land and not possessing his own tea processing factory. In Sri Lanka, smallholding is an area of land less than 50 acres (20.2 hectares). In Indonesia, small growers are those who cultivate on the land size between 0.8 and 2 hectares and sell tea without processing (Tea World, an initiative of KKHSOU 2018–19). While in India, as per the definition of the Tea Board of India, the holding that does not exceed 10 hectares is counted as small (Reddy and Bhowmik 1989), whereas the Government of Assam considers only those growers as small tea growers (STGs) with a maximum tea holding size of 4.0 hectares (Kakati 2011).
The Rise of Small Tea Growers
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