Assam’s small tea growers, who account for more than half of the State’s annual tea production of 692 million kg, have come together to launch two tea brands.
Most of Assam’s small tea growers, a category of planters who own up to 100 bighas of land, used to be content with supplying their tea leaves to factories run by major tea estates or stand-alone bought-leaf factories. But the crisis being faced by the industry has made them team up as a cooperative society to launch ‘Asomiya Red’ and ‘Asomia Green’ — two handmade organic brands on Thursday.
There are more than 70,000 small tea growers, an estimate based on the State government survey in 2011. Together, they account for 52% of the tea production in Assam. “Some growers may not be producing the right teas... But marketing them a larger scale remained an issue. So we decided to launch our own brands,” said a spokesperson of the newly-formed Assam Small Tea Growers’ Development Cooperative Society.
