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Siddharth, chairman, Tea Board, said the board was committed to ensuring long-term success and competitive viability of the Indian tea industry, with specific attention to the advancement of workers, growers, packers and consumer needs.
“We are constantly striving to implement measures to safeguard consumers, workers and growers, and help the industry deliver products that are safe for consumption while also improving livelihoods of plantation workers and small holder farmers. This concern has driven the Tea Board’s proactive efforts to partner the industry and develop the Trustea India Sustainability Tea Program, he added.
Incorporating globally-accepted sustainability principles, Trustea is a sustainable tea code based on Indian realities. As international standards are costly to implement in Asia’s low-margin business model, the top-down one-size-fits-all approach of global certifications does not consider Indian conditions.
In the next three years, the programme envisions verifying over 600 factories, covering 500,000 workers and 40,000 small holders, making 300,000 hectares sustainable, placing 1,200 Trustea trainers on the ground and certifying 500 million kg of tea, amounting to 51 per cent of India’s tea supply, he said.
Trustea is driving a multi-faceted effort for continuous improvement of tea-producing farms and plantations. The programme incorporates elements of management systems, product traceability, soil conservation, water management, agrochemicals, food safety, occupational health and safety, biodiversity and environmental management, working conditions, labour rights, and waste and pollution management.
Plantation companies and smallholder farmer groups are encouraged to achieve verification against the voluntary Trustea code, while the programme offers training programs and tools to help farmers and factories achieve verification and become more sustainable.
The Trustea India Sustainable Tea Program will incorporate the Tea Board’s Plant Protection Code (PPC). Given tea’s susceptibility to pathogens and faster spread of pests and diseases, synthetic pesticides are necessary to keep the influence and harm from these pests in check while safeguarding tea yields and therefore farmers’ incomes.
While the responsible use of pesticides is strictly regulated by the Government and their use kept to a minimum, the PPC was developed as a best practice guide to tea production,setting standards jointly agreed by key stakeholders, supplementing existing regulations, such as the Food Safety and Standards Act of India 2006 and the list of products permitted for use in the tea sector by the Central Insecticides Board and Registration Committee.
The present PPC is the first version of the code, and an expert technical group has been constituted to regularly review and update this code with the ambition to gradually reduce/eliminate the WHO class II and III chemicals.
Under the Trustea Programme, six pilot projects have been launched across the country to demonstrate the sustainability of tea cultivation using the more bio-friendly methods outlined in the PPC and the Trustea code.
Trustea programme encourages collaborative effort for effective implementation, inviting the wider stakeholder community to work with the trustea technical team, Tea Research Associations and Tea Board of India to identify best practices, and assist grassroot efforts to embed the spirit of the programme's sustainability efforts amongst tea producers.
