Tea Board working on plan to help small growers

To enable small tea growers (STG) in the state to produce tea at competitive prices, the Tea Board intends to develop "micro-mini" tea processing units.

J Boriah, director for tea plantation of the Tea Board, said the search was on for a model that could process small quantity of leaf economically.

"IIT Kharagpur is working on various models so that as to process 500-1000 kg of tea leaf," he said.

"The plan is to have a single unit for a group of 15-20 STGs so as to reduce their transport cost," he added.

According to Boriah the cost of a micro unit would be around Rs 15-20 lakh and the Board would provide a 50 per cent subsidy. "Presently there is a model unit in Jorhat Agricultural university of Assam, producing only green tea but we are planning to scale down its processing capacity further," Boriah added.

"The STGs contribute about 25-30 percent of the total production in India and hold 15 percent of the total area under the tea plantation, and as such the development of the STGs are one of the prime focus of the Tea Board, under the 11th five year plan," said Bhoriah.

The Board was encouraging STGs to organise themselves into self-help group (SHG), so that their needs could be addressed collectively. STGs constitute 28 per cent of the total production in West Bengal

"The present production of the 15000 STGs in the districts of Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, North Dinajpur and Coochbehar in the state is about 63.43 million kg of green leaf," said B G Chakraborty, vice-chairman of the United Forum of Small Tea Growers' Association of North Bengal.

The SHG model came to the picture in the North Bengal in 2005 and it has been a success in the region, particularly in increasing the collective bargaining power of STGs.

Currently, there are 14 SHGs in the region.

The first SHG that came up in the region was at Panbari with 34 members in the Maynaguri block of the Jalpaiguri district, named Panbari STG Society. Thanks to its success in fair price realisation and leaf quality, membership has increased to 200, said Chakraborty

"Last year the Panbari society supplied 12 lakh kg of green leaf to factories and seeing the success a local bank also came up with loans for the members in off season," he said.

Besides the society members maintain a compulsory deposit of Re 1 per kg of leaf supplied as an emergency fund, he added. Outlining the role of the Tea Board, he said, "The board provides the tea leaf shades, leaf carrying bags, weighing machines, and leaf carrying plastic crates for handing of leaf, at 100 percent subsidy, beside a vehicle per society at 50 per cent subsidy".

To produce better quality and impart managerial and technical skills, the board would send two people from each society for training so that each society had trained managerial and technical expertise in-house.