‘Brewing tea’ during the pandemic - EDITORIAL

The COVID-19 pandemic serves us with a wake-up call. How? It teaches us that we have to save up for harder times. 
A good number of state and private sector companies are severely handicapped due to the pandemic forcing customers to stay indoors as much as possible. 
Similar to industries like tourism and hotels one of the industries affected by the pandemic is the tea industry. The tea industry may be plucking 365 days of the year, but this is an industry which is used to tightening its belt during months where the yield is low. 

At present the produce from tea estates is low. Don’t jump to the conclusion that this is all due to the coronavirus. Tea production was anyway struggling before COVID-19 surfaced due to inclement weather, shortage of labour and lack of technical application. The rise of the recent pandemic had the effect of poking in the eye of a child who was about to cry!

Tea is one of the signature business products of this country. We export to an international market which sees countries like Russia, Iraq, Turkey and Syria buying loads of tea from us. But the present pandemic doesn’t allow us to do business with these nations as freely as in past years due to health reasons. As we know the COVID-19 virus can be present on the surface of products; hence import/export of products to and fro from Sri Lanka is handicapped largely. 

But we have to stop being negative about the impacts of the pandemic and open our eyes to the world. Again, before the pandemic raised its head the world was moving away from black tea and embracing beverages containing more health properties like green tea. For the record Sri Lanka is still largely focused on black tea and might be considered an infant in the green tea business she is showing some interest in. 

The second COVID-19 wave floored almost all leading businesses. The thirst market too was not spared. The best prices for our teas come from the international market, but that is in limbo due to the pandemic that’s reveling in disrupting the lives of people. When global supply chain factors are affected the supply side, trade flow, demand side or a combination of all three can be severely affected, pens researcher Nimesha Dissanayaka in her column in Mirror Business. 

Other industries can palm the blame for their misfortunes on the coronavirus, but the tea industry must think deep and try to rectify some of its ‘homegrown’ problems. 
The local production of tea declined during the first and second quarters. This was because by nature supplies of labour intensive agricultural products in low income countries are likely to be badly affected by a pandemic like COVID-19. 

But despite the doom and gloom allround we hear of some sunshine stories from the tea estate sector. There are local tea estates that have done well to hold onto their positions among the top 10 ranks for Western High Grown Tea. We’ve also heard that Sri Lanka’s lot in the global tea market improved due to less exports from international competitors. The depreciating rupee also gave Sri Lanka’s tea exports a price advantage.  
The tea industry accounts for 12% of the total export earnings. That’s a statistic that can be used to motivate those in the tea trade and make the estate sector work hard and return to its past glory. 

There is one factor that stands as an advantage for those doing the administration in tea estates. The labourers working in these estates are happy-go-lucky employees and don’t much care for their wellbeing. Just the other day we read in newspapers that the folk in estate areas in Nuwara Eliya District were seen happily engaging in shopping in preparation of the upcoming Deepavali festival. Most of them were not even following health guidelines specified to combat the present pandemic. 

The estate sector needs people who’d practise health guidelines and engage in the plucking. Not wearing maks and exposing oneself to risk can’t be condoned. We need daredevilry at this juncture, but not suicide and tea pluckers are quite capable of the former.