Credit: Annette Kay – Satemwa

SATEMWA, MALAWI

SATEMWA.COM

Satemwa, a nearly 100-year-old family-owned tea farm, is set at 1000 m altitude in the Shire Highlands of Southern Malawi. The farm was founded in 1923 by a Scotsman named Maclean Kay. The garden is now run by his grandson, Alexander Kay. Satemwa is one of the last family-owned tea farms in the region, as most have been purchased by large companies producing commodity tea.

Satemwa reintroduced orthodox production in 2006, experimented with local cultivars, traditional and new processing, which gained Satemwa local and global recognition for its specialty tea. Satemwa believes in direct trade and traceability and active partnering in its community. As the only orthodox tea producer in Malawi, Satemwa is Fair Trade, UTZ+ and Rainforest Alliance Certified.
Satemwa employs around 2,500 people in the high season, providing clinics and primary services for workers and their families. It was the first tea farm to employ women and has a progressive gender-equitypolicy that has allowed some woman to take on managerial positions. Satemwa works with smallholders from the Msuwadzi Small Holder Association of tea growers around Satemwa to improve their practices and certify their teas. Yamba (“Start”) is a local smallholder brand that was launched by Satemwa and the association to increase the smallholder returns from teas and avoid the commodity trap.

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KANCHANJANGHA TEA ESTATE, NEPAL

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Kanchanjangha Tea Estate is located at Ranitar in the remote hilly region of Panchthar district in eastern Nepal bordering the tea area of Darjeeling at an altitude of 1300-1800m. The tea garden lies at the foothills of Mt. Kanchenjunga, which has rich vegetation with excellent conditions to produce aromatic teas. The enterprise was launched in 1984 by Deepak Baskota along with local farmers on a cooperative model. Over 100 farmers joined hands, pooled their marginal landholdings and became owners of the first orthodox tea garden covering nearly 94 hectares of land. The land, which was barely enough to sustain them, now produces premium, organic, orthodox tea in the Himalayas.

Kanchanjangha Tea Estate has been socially responsible from the beginning. The 100 cooperative members who also actively farm the land are the owners themselves. As shareholders they participate in the decision-making process and receive dividends. Kanchanjangha Tea Estate strongly believes and works in the cooperative model.

Today, the farm has 129 workers in the garden and another 44 in the factory. All of these 173 workers are also members of the cooperative. Workers receive free housing, subsidized food and education for their children. Kanchanjangha also supports 235 farmers in the region by providing organic certification and technical support. These farmers recently established their own small factory.

Kanchanjangha has led a cow bank project in which farmers receive cows to earn extra income. Farmers sell the dairy products directly in the market, and Kanchanjangha buys the cow dung from them. One condition for the programme is that the first calf is returned back to the factory so that it can be distributed to other farmers. The programme started with 36 cows and now has 176 cows.

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NATURALITEA, JAPAN

NATURALITEA.COM

NaturaliTea is a community of 26 member farmers close to Shizuoka, near Nakayama Village, up in the mountains behind the city of Fujieda 200 km from Tokyo in the southeast. All farms are located within a 5 km radius of one another.The founding family and spiritual leader of this group is the Kinezuka family who are considered Japan’s pioneers of all-natural tea farming. They created NaturaliTea with a mission to “connect People, Agriculture and Nature” and to actively work to address the challenges faced by the farming community and the future of tea in the area.

Toshiaki Kinezuka started farming with all-natural methods back in 1976 and has been following organic practices ever since. This is a great achievement in the midst of Japan’s heavy chemical use in the tea industry. His daughter, Ayumi, initially emigrated to the United States but returned to take over the family farm and to keep Japanese tea production alive while learning from other tea traditions. She works with her brother, Kazuki, on the farms while her sister Tamiko and mother Kazue take care of quality control for the finished tea and shipping logistics. The Kinezuka families farm is s located at an altitude of 350 metres (1150 feet) and all teas are grown from the Yabukita cultivar.

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HARENDONG, INDONESIA

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Founded in 2006, Harendong Organic Tea Estate is a certified organic tea farm nestled in the mountainous area around in Lebak, Banten on Java Island, Indonesia. At 800 to 1,000 meters, this medium-sized family farm is surrounded by incredible biodiversity where indigenous traditions have been handed down for hundreds of years. There is a strong emphasis on eco-friendly farming to preserve and protect natural resources and maintain a harmonious life cycle. The climate is lush, tropical and very humid with abundant rainfall and rich volcanic soil. Harendong is committed to producing teas that reflect the nature around them.

As a young estate, Harendong is keen to get things right from the beginning. While the farm includes 140 hectares, only 40 are currently cultivated. While there are plans to grow further, the family wants this to happen sustainably. When setting up, Harendong learned the traditions of the locals and built the farm around them, blending modern agriculture with indigenous traditions and leaving areas undisturbed that, according to local beliefs, should be left alone. When Harendong began cultivating the land, they repaired the road to the village to improve access to the main road and connected electricity. Harendong currently provides employment to 150 villagers. Workers are compensated in cash and mostly live off the farm. Prayer sites have been built around the farm to help workers keep their prayer routine.

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JHENTEA, TAIWAN

JHENTEA.COM

Jhentea is a family business of tea makers and tea growers led by tea masters Fu Chen and her daughter Ai Fang. Together they craft teas with humble intentions and a deep spiritual connection to the leaves and the art of tea. Ai Fang’s family has been making tea since the 19th century, which makes her a 4th generation tea maker.

Fu Chen and Ai Fang are particular about their own family farms and other fields from which they harvest. They have been working with the same, like-minded tea farmers for decades. This allows them to work with pure leaves, free of chemicals and pesticides, just as they personally prefer. Over time, the family has focused on oolongs. The hardest tea to make, the family believes its also the best tea. The families’ passion is to reduce artificial influence on tea and produce tea that speak their own character.

The family contracts additional farmers to help grow the tea for them while staying closely involved on how to control the garden. They participate in harvesting and post production. Yen Hwai’s farm, for example, is in Zhushan, in central Nantou in a humid, low-elevation area, which attracts pests and insects. While it is challenging to use organic methods here, Yen Hwai Li is committed to organic cultivation and uses micro-organisms to revitalize the soil, bringing biodiversity and healthy soils to the garden. Following harvest, Yen Hwai sells its raw leaves to Ai Fang of Jhentea who then craft the tea.

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TUMOI TEAS, KENYA

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Tumoi Teas is set in the Nadi Hills in the rift valley of Kenya. In collaboration with other like-minded partners, Boaz Katah (the current manager of Tumoi Teas) and his partners are setting up a limited company made up of 100 farmers. Tumoi Teas is in the process of obtaining organic and fair trade certification.

Tumoi Tea’s mission is to produce quality teas that provide fair and sustainable wages for tea-farming families. Since 2012 they have created sustainable jobs for youth and women in rural Kenya and opened the country’s first small-scale, farmer-owned, artisanal tea factory. Currently they employ 8 tea workers at the factory, 30 people to hand pluck leaves in the garden, and over 10 small-scale tea growers. Over 80% of the employees are women, and they support hundreds of small-scale herbal tea farmers in their community. By teaming up with the Women’s Herbal Tea Co-op in Eastern Kenya, Tumoi Teas is also helping to distribute organic Kenyan herbs to global markets.

Tumoi teas has a literacy program with three schools around the factory. Most of the children are not able to read and communicate well in English (the official language in Kenya). The aim is to bring the children up to par with the rest of the children in the country when it comes to communication.

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