abhishek n. chinnappa

Brewing Trouble in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan tea (popularly known as Ceylon Tea for generations) carries behind it a heritage and success story like no other. Sri Lanka’s tea country, an area blessed with Cassia fistula and Filicium decipiens trees, majestic waterfalls on velvety hills, and terrace after terrace of tea plants, complemented by a blanket of mist enhances the country’s mystique.

In the heart of the tropical island nation lies a region suited to growing coffee. But as terrible luck would have it, in the late 18th century,  the much-dreaded coffee leaf rust, Hemileia vastatrix, colonised most of the coffee-growing parts of the country spread over 400,000 acres until nearly all the trees were defoliated. In 1870, Ceylon was exporting 45 million kilograms of coffee a year. By 1889, the production was down to 2.3 million kilograms. In less than two decades, most coffee plantations were destroyed and production had essentially ceased.

Scotsman James Taylor who had arrived in Ceylon in 1852 had begun experimenting with cultivating tea, Camellia Sinensis, on a 19-acre tea plantation at the Loolecondera Estate, Deltota. He did the groundwork for what would become Sri Lanka’s largest export industry for over a century. 

The century-old success story started wearing thin after Gotabaya Rajapaksa tasted electoral success in the country’s presidential election in 2019. He cut value-added tax to 8 percent from 15 percent. The sweeping tax cuts led to a credit rating downgrade in 2020 leading to Sri Lanka losing access to international financial markets. This also increased fiscal deficits further, all of which undermined the country’s debt management efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 deepened the crisis. Tourist footfall and tourism revenues plummeted; exports of tea declined due to lower demand; and remittances, another booster to the foreign exchange reserve, also fell as Lankans across the globe lost jobs.

In the midst of economic hardships, the government in April 2021 enforced a ban on the import of chemical fertilisers and synthetic pesticides to make the nation fully organic. The farming community expressed fears that such a drastic policy shift could result in a steep drop in yield and deepen food insecurity.

The mountain slopes of Sri Lanka’s highlands around Nuwara Eliya and Uda Pussallawa, the ancient Kandyan kingdom midlands around Kandy and Uwa, and the culturally rich lowlands around Sabaragamuwa are swathed in tea plants making up the estates that produce teas savoured around the world. Most of these historic tea plantations are a legacy of British colonial culture—the sight of Tamil pickers gathering delicate tea leaves by hand remains an archetypal image of Sri Lanka.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, people with jobs, particularly people working in the informal and service sectors, suffered a lot. While many of these workers lost their jobs and moved to agriculture for subsistence, the government’s decision to ban the import of fertilisers dampened the enthusiasm amongst the new farmers and brought ruin to the old.

Some studies have shown that the production of some crops shrunk by as much as 30 percent. Frustrated with the situation, people left the lands uncultivated. As much as one-third of the agricultural land is reported to have remained uncultivated or farmers are shifting to the cultivation of cinnamon, Cinnamomum Zeylanicum, in the lowlands and horticulture in the highlands. 

The hills are abuzz with the tunes of songs of the older generation of Tamil tea pickers who were brought from India. The Tamil workers continue to be one of the most marginalised and impoverished people in the country. They gather fresh leaves every day on the slopes before they are either dropped off at nearby factories or collected from the collection coaches that pass their hamlets every day.

Once the leaves are checked by quality control at the factories, they are laid out on withering troughs which gradually loosens the moisture from the leaves. The process of withering alters the physical and chemical compounds of the tea. Then they are rolled under giant mechanised rolling machines, which causes the cells to break, releasing enzymes and bringing them into contact with air so that fermentation can commence. When the perfect amount of aeration occurs, the leaf is baked in a furnace.

After the bake, the leaves are sifted to sort through different grades based on the leaf's sizes and then they are carefully packed in large paper sacks and shipped off to weekly auctions in Colombo.

Alongside a booming tea production industry, tea tourism was becoming increasingly popular until the Easter Sunday serial bomb blasts in April 2019, followed by the global COVID-19 lockdowns. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate puts the cost of these two developments on tourism at about $10 billion.

Tourism is the third largest Sri Lankan forex earner and a major one at that. The current phase of political and economic instability, in the face of the forex crisis, food and fuel shortage hitting both the hospitality industry and transport sector, has worsened the situation.

Visits to the tea plantations usually form a part of a longer Sri Lanka holiday and often provide some of the most memorable imagery, but now all that remains are shuttered bungalows and cottages, empty cafes, and a sparse audience for a tea-tasting session.

The support side of the tea export business comprises processing, warehousing, and logistics. The ever-growing demand for Ceylon Tea has made Sri Lanka one of the largest tea-exporting countries in the world.

The Colombo Tea Auction is the single largest tea auction in the world. COVID-19 changed the 137-year-old tea auction from its famous outcry system to a digital auction system.

The tea supply chain is one of the oldest and most efficient supply chains in the country. It provides a significant contribution to balancing tea demand and supply. The involvement of logistics management is of paramount importance for achieving sustainability. However, the island’s share of world tea production and export is gradually decreasing.

Sri Lanka is in the middle of its worst economic crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948. The country has been rocked by protests as people seethe with anger over soaring prices and shortages of food and fuel and the pain is being felt in tea estates distant from the capital Colombo.

Tea is the country's biggest single export at US$1.25 billion a year and with exports at their lowest level in over 20 years, tea industry analysts warn, that if the crisis is not soon resolved, it will have a drastic effect on the national economy and impact the livelihoods of over 2 million people dependent on the industry.

In order to cross this delicate predicament, Sri Lanka has to institutionalise democracy, put an end to dynastic rule, institute an effective and populist government with accountability, restore beneficial economic policies, and ensure a level playing field for all classes. Maybe the tunes from the hills will waft through the country once again and bring back glory days for the tea industry and the country.

These images were shot on assignment for Getty Images in April and May 2022.