PRODUCTION CONDITIONS IN SMALL TEA GARDENS IN ASSAM
2.1 Production Conditions
Tea is one of the most important plantation crops of India where production takes place in both large plantation and small gardens. The production of tea in India and the contribution of small growers and big plantations in it can be seen from the works of Hannan (2013) and Hazarika and Borah (2013), which have been compiled in Table 2.1. Even though there is an increase in the total production of tea from 2003 onwards in big gardens, the data reveals a continuous decrease in the percentage share in the production contribution of the big growers (Hannan, 2013;
Hazarika and Borah, 2013). In contrast, small growers have shown increase in the total production as well as in percentage share in the total production.
Table 2.1: Production of Tea in India (million kg)
Year
Small Growers (Area upto 10.12 hectares)
Big Plantation (Area above 10.12 hectares)
Total Production
2003 180.66 (20.57) 697.47 (79.43) 878.13
2005 231.29 (24.45) 714.68 (75.55) 945.97
2007 257.46 (26.10) 728.97 (73.90) 986.43
2008 257.46 (26.24) 723.36 (73.76) 980.82
2011 260.00 (26.31) 728.00 (73.68) 988.00
2012 1135.07
2013 1208.78
Source: Hannan (2013), Hazarika & Borah (2013), TBI
(Figures within parentheses indicate percentage to national total)
Available data indicates that at the national level, there is an absolute increase in the number of small tea gardens across India from 1,10,396 in 2000 to 1,57,504 in 2007 (Table 1.5 of Chapter I). The area under tea cultivation has gone up from 1,09,189 hectares in 2003 to 1,62,431 hectares in 2007 which is depicted in Table 2.2. During the same period, the area under estate gardens/big growers seem to be almost constant. The percentage share of area under cultivation for tea shows that the small growers constituted 21.02 percent in 2003 and increased to 28.08 percent in 2007. In contrast land share of estate gardens/big growers have rather shown a declining trend from 78.98 percent to 71.92 percent during the same period. The share of tea production of the small-holders has also increased substantially from 20.57 percent to 26.31 percent during the period between 2003 and 2011 (Hannan, 2013).
Table 2.2: Area of Tea in India (hectares)
Year Small Growers (Area upto 10.12 hectares)
Big Plantation (Area above 10.12 hectares) 2003 1,09,189 (21.02) 4,10,400 (78.98) 2005 1,42,985 (25.73) 4,12,626 (74.27) 2007 1,62,431 (28.08) 4,16,027 (71.92)
Source: Hannan (2013)
(Figures within parentheses indicate percentage to national total)
Table 2.3 shows the distribution of area and production by small holders and estate gardens in each State of 2003.
Table 2.3: Share of Small and Estate Tea Gardens in India (2003)
(Figures show the percentage share)
Region
Small Growers Big Growers
No. of Estates
Area
in Ha Production No. of
Estates Area in Ha Production
Assam 98.2 15.2 14.5 1.8 84.8 85.5
W. Bengal 96.5 8.4 17.1 3.5 91.6 82.9
Others 98.0 42.5 20.3 2.0 57.5 79.7
Northern India 97.9 14.5 15.4 2.1 85.5 84.6
Tamil Nadu 99.6 57.1 55.0 0.4 42.9 45.0
Kerela 97.5 13.0 3.4 2.5 87.0 96.6
Karnataka 50.0 3.9 4.0 50.0 96.1 96.0
Southern India 99.4 41.9 39.2 0.6 58.1 60.8
All India 98.7 20.6 21.2 1.3 79.4 78.8
Source: Kadavil (2008)
The contribution of big growers was noteworthy in 2003 and it accounted for 78.8 per cent. Out of the tea produced in India, small tea growers of Assam constituted the major share, both in the number of estates as well as in the production (Kadavil, 2008). But compared to the national average small tea gardens’ share in terms of number, area and production was low in Assam in 2003. In other words, although small tea growers picked up in a big way in Assam, it was yet to reach the all-India average, let alone being more than the average.
With the expansion of the smallholdings by the late 1990s, a favourable recourse of the estate sector to procure green leaves from the tea smallholdings could be noticed. The period also experienced dwindling productivity of the tea acreage under the estate sector. The reason behind this was considered to be old plantation led stagnant or declining productivity, rising cost of production, taxation burden and stiff challenge in the market, particularly from newly emerged tea producing countries. And in a labour-intensive sector like tea a cut in labour costs obviously reduces the cost of production to a significant extent. On the other hand, re-plantations and maintenance – which are crucial to sustain field productivity, have emerged as prime and common issues in tea sector of India. Tea production has been slowly moving from estate sector to smallholdings plantations (Das, 2014).
Table 2.4: Production and Share of Small Sector in India
Year Production Million Kg % Share in Total Production
2011 316.73 28.39%
2012 363.09 32.24%
2013 374.91 31.23%
Source: Tea Board of India
According to the latest report of Tea Board of India, Development of small tea holdings in India, the contribution from small sector has gone up from 5% in early 1990s to more than 31% in 2013 which is shown in Table 2.4.
Table 2.5 depicts that there is a continuous increase in the number of STGs in the region from 2007 to 2016 whereas there is a slight decrease in the number of big tea gardens over the same time period. The area under cultivation by both small and big growers has decreased with variations in between 2007 to 2016 implying the size of the gardens are becoming smaller.
Though there is a decreasing trend of the area under cultivation, the STGs have shown a
substantial increase in the production implying improvement in the yield of land whereas the contribution of the big growers has oscillating trend with slight variations. As such the effect on the total number of tea gardens has shown an increasing nature but the area under cultivation have remained almost same. And production in total has grown steadily during this period.
Table 2.5: Tea Gardens, Area and Production by type of tea gardens in Assam 2007 to 2016
Year Small Growers (upto 10.12 hect.) Big Growers (above 10.12 hect) Total
No. of Tea Gardens
Area Production No. of Tea Gardens
Area Production No. of Tea Gardens
Area Production
2007 64597 88674 106881 825 232645 405004 65422 321319 511885
2008 NA 88674 NA 760 230113 437810 760 321437 487497
2009 NA 88674 NA 760 230060 451970 760 321687 499997
2010 NA 88674 NA 760 229790 450100 760 322222 480286
2011 78091 88674 NA 760 229140 476767 78856 322210 589110
2012 68459 88674 NA 761 233536 590120 69220 322210 590120
2013 68459 88674 NA 761 233536 629050 69220 322210 629050
2014 76949 71871 144254 761 232529 466716 77710 304400 610970
2015 82805 83880 139491 761 232529 386694 83566 316409 526185
2016 84577 78203 NA 767 226197 NA 85344 314400 642180
Source: Tea Board of India, Regional Office, Guwahati, Assam
Even though small tea cultivation is practiced in all the districts of Assam, but Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat and Golaghat districts of Upper Assam have the largest area under small tea cultivation with highest production of tea leaves. The production of tea leaf of Assam is influenced by several factors, viz., agro-climatic factors like climate, rainfall and soil type and economic factors such as labour use, infrastructure facilities like transport and communication, cost of cultivation, price received by the growers, credit facilities, etc. During the last four decades the number of small tea growers of the State has increased many times which was discussed in Chapter I Table: 1.5 and the proportion of area under cultivation has also gone up
significantly which is shown in Table: 1.6 of Chapter I and Table 2.2 of the present chapter.
Growth of small tea growers has led to major changes in the structure of the economy of Assam.
Changes that the growth of small tea growers prompted are four-fold. First, with the introduction of small tea cultivation in Assam, activities related to small tea garden production became economically attractive which brought waste lands into small tea cultivation (Das, 2014).
Secondly, progress of small tea cultivation created additional employment opportunities (Ganguli, 2013). Thirdly, the bought leaf factories and the leaf agents were the new actors in the tea sector. Additionally, they have created non-farm employment opportunities also (Hannan, 2013). Finally, the establishment of AASTGA, STAP, and the assistance of the Tea Board has brought the changes in the small tea cultivation (Ganguli, 2013). However the small tea growers have faced several problems starting from the availability of labour to credit facilities including the communication problems and the un-remunerative price of their tea leaves, which we have discussed in the last chapter. These factors have affected the small tea growers adversely. This chapter proposes to critically examine the production conditions of small tea gardens of Assam at a greater depth. While the previous chapter introduced the themes, this chapter will dwell on them with supporting secondary data and preliminary analysis. This will set the stage for our own primary data collection and analysis of the data, which will be taken up in the subsequent chapters.
At the outset we take a stock of tea leaf production by the small tea growers. The growth of small tea growers in terms of their number, area under cultivation and production of tea leaves will be examined along with the growth of bought leaf factories. The nature of the small tea cultivation will also be discussed in this part. The analysis will be carried out on the basis of the secondary data. In the second part of the chapter factors affecting tea cultivation in small gardens will be studied in detail. This will be based on the previous research conducted by other researchers.