Trouble brewing for Sri Lankan tea

Sri Lanka's attempt to become the world's first 100 percent organic food producer threatens its prized tea industry.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned chemical fertilisers this year, but tea plantation owners are predicting crops could fail, as early as October 2021 without them. Producers of cinnamon, pepper and rice are also facing problems.

Master tea maker Herman Gunaratne was one of 46 experts selected by the president to guide his ambitious organic scheme, but he fears the worst for tea growers.

Herman Gunaratne: "It is the urea and the nitrogen content that forces the growth of the tea bud and of the green leaf. Without it you can, you can expect a decline in production by as much as 50%."

Sri Lanka is in the middle of an economic crisis, following the pandemic. Last year its gross domestic product or GDP contracted by 3 percent. Hopes of a return to economic growth have been destroyed by a new Coronavirus wave.

Fertiliser and pesticides are among key imports which the government has halted, while it battles foreign currency shortages.

Gunaratne believes that the reduction in tea production will aggravate the country's economic problems.

Herman Gunaratne: "So it is going to number one, make a big dent in the foreign exchange earnings of the country. Number two, it is going to render a great part of our population unemployed and number three and more importantly, we are going to lose the global image that we had for Ceylon Tea."

Gunaratne, whose Virgin White tea sells for $2000 a kilo, has been removed from the president's task force for disagreeing with the organic only policy.

Tea is Sri Lanka's single biggest export. It brings in more than $1.25 billion a year. Gunaratne predicts going organic will halve production.

Herman Gunaratne: "We are not going to get 50% higher prices. And there is an extremely limited market for organic tea in the world. There is no way in which it can compensate for the decline in crop."

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