Kumaon Tea

The Challenge

Tea farmers rarely profit from their profession. The money goes to the processing plants, brands, and distributors with little left over for the people who work the fields. In the Himalayan region of Kumaon, lack of local livelihood opportunities has driven youth to overcrowded cities and once-rich farmland is deteriorating into fallow fields and unstable dirt. The people left behind are disproportionately women. In addition to economic hardship, they face climate shocks in the form of long droughts, dangerous flooding, and deadly landslides.

The Innovation

Kumaon Tea not only gives local farmers in Kumaon well-paying jobs growing and processing tea, it gives them partial ownership of the company. This allows farmers to capture the value of tea at the source, rather than watching it diffuse to others throughout the system. The company has built a farmer-owned tea processing plant and operates a farmers’ trust, which is 90% women and will eventually hold a controlling stake of the company.