Bandung: International Tea Convention 2014

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It was a big day for one of the doyens of Indonesian tea, Rachmat Badruddin, chair- man of the Indonesia Tea Board (ITB) and, for almost 25 years, principal of green tea supplier PT Kabepe Chakra in Bandung.

The Indonesia Tea Board was organizing and sponsoring the Bandung International Tea Convention, BITC 2014, and co-hosting, with the Food and Agriculture Orga- nization of the UN (FAO), the International Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG). Badruddin had reasons to be proud and hopeful, as he made his opening remarks, welcoming the conferees to the first meeting. There was a lot to be optimistic about. Indonesia is blessed with a young population, said Badruddin. Of its 240 million citi- zens spread across 3,000 islands, 60% are under 39, and half are under 29. There is lots of youthful energy and creativity to be tapped. Indonesia has a young new president, a warm, spontaneous, potentially independent leader, the first since Independence in 1945 to be elected with a non-military background or from a leading family dynasty. It has been almost 70 years since independence from the Dutch, “perhaps, this is the start

of another positive 70-year cycle,” Badruddin hoped.

But analysis cuts several ways. Indonesia’s youthful population consumes only 0.3 kgs. of tea per person, comparing unfavorably with Britain, at 4.3 kilos and China, at 1.2 kilos. Even with these figures, the Indonesian tea industry does not produce enough tea to satisfy the internal market. Due to this underproduction, the nation must annually import 20,500 kilos of tea mainly from India and Sri Lanka.

From his vantage point as meeting chair, Badruddin characterized what was going wrong and listed potential solutions, ending with a positive note about the future. The future, he said, was clearly with the tea smallholder, the Indonesian farming family holding about 1-2 hectares (approx. 2.5 to 5 acres) of land. These farmers own 70% of tea-producing soil in Indonesia and grow 60% of its green leaf, though not enough to satisfy demand.

Badruddin implied that: 1) the industry needs to promote tea-drinking in all forms to today’s non-tea consumers, of which, thankfully, there are many; and 2) the tea industry needs to assist the smallholder in raising tea production to meet existing demand and any expansion of the market, cutting tea imports significantly.

Badruddin was both upbeat (“I am the happiest person in this room, among the fraternity of tea!”) and realistic. “Tea producers have so far have been unable to get their fair share of the margin enjoyed along the value chain. The traders sometimes get a handsome margin without feeling an obligation to care for the garden and don’t have to deal with the headache of workers,” he said.

He clearly reflected the mixed feelings in the room, among fraternity brothers and sisters: there was palpable concern over the low world market price of tea, over increasingly stringent, non-harmonized, national and international food purity standards, and about global warming, which- some would say - was the elephant in the room nobody wanted to see or discuss.

The chairman of ITB wound up his presentation with a call to action: He said the sustainable future of tea lies with the smallholder, but competition is high and marketing a diverse product line is key. The problem is the size of the piece of cake the tea smallholder is getting.

“It is small, we must make  it  bigger! The government can do that!” he said, referring to Indonesia, but thinking globally. Quoting US president, John F. Kennedy, he said, “If we cannot save the many who are (relatively) poor, we cannot help the few who are rich.”

What would further energize the tea industry, he emphasized, is cooperation. He called on Liptons, Tata Global-Tetley, Twinings, Japan’s Ito En, and Sri Lanka’s Dilmah to pitch in.