THE TEA SMALL HOLDERSECTOR IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Tea small holdings in Sri Lanka originated from about the first decade of the twentieth century, and developed slowly as subsistence farming families within the vicinity of commercial plantations. These peasants cultivated tea in small parcels of land, managed by the family members themselves, with very basic inputs. The green leaf harvested by these peasants was monopolized by various intermediaries in the supply chain - from leaf collection from growers to transport to processing factories. Consequently, the net income to the grower continued to be very meager. Land reform policies and land re-settlement schemes of the early 1970s, resulted in a significant growth of tea small holdings within the different tea growing districts of the country. As per the first Census of 1983 there were 159,865 tea holdings, accounting for a land area of 75,769 ha, with an average size of 0.47 ha per holding. Despite such expansion, the sector continued to perform poorly due to the inadequacies of technical support and poor facilities for leaf collection and transport to the processing factories, with a significant number of these farming peasants yet hovering around poverty line. With the intervention of the government to set up the Tea Small Holdings Development Authority (TSHDA) in 1975 and the follow-up financial assistance from international lending institutions from about the late 1980s, this sector has since improved significantly and evolved to attain the present status of an important player in the country's economy. With a current extent in production of 110,236 ha, yielding an average of 1,853 kg/ha, the total production of tea by the tea smallholders in 2004 was 204.6million kg, which is 66 percent of total country production of 308.1m. kg.