joe doe

I am providing a link to a series of pictures of workers in Indian tea
gardens.

While we enjoy our tea and concentrate on flavor and other nuances we
are largely oblivious to the plight of the tea producers.

See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/south_asia_india
_tea_workers/html/1.stm


While tea snobs can certainly not solve all the problems of the Tea
Industry perhaps purchasing fair trade teas may be one small step
towards helping them.

Roland

toci

Fair trade tea has been discussed in this forum more than ten times.
The most recent time was last month. One nice thing about tea
drinkers, they tend to be polite. Toci

michael plant

Joe DoeNone-A4BB57.16531214072005@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu7/14/05
17:53None@mail.utexas.edu

Here here, and thanks, Roland. Fair trade might also mean being willing to
pay enough money for the tea so that the workers can earn a decent amount.
I'm of course not talking about just paying high prices per se. More to
learn.

Michael

michael plant

toci1121389166.056101.52920@g44g2000...legrou ps.com7/14/05
20:59gina39d@yahoo.com

Yes, indeed. And so it should again. Question: Can we rely upon the fair
trade dealers to truly support fair working conditions, or is "fair trade,"
at least in some cases, a marketing ploy? I think Ripon has some
interesting insights and observations in this area, and I wish he were here
to share them.

Michael

toci

It's always good to be on your toes in the commercial world. Toici

space cowboy

You could allow more Indians with green cards to work in the IS
industry displacing domestic workers. The infrastructure and labor of
the oil producing countries of the Middle East are Indian. Where's
there is money there are Indians. India can handle it's own labor
problems. This is nothing more than a guilt trip like starving
children who want me to give up part of my tea allowance so they can
eat some of the white bread which won't sell because of the Atkins
diet.

Jim

michael plant

Space Cowboy1121430455.352651.34690@g49g20...legr oups.com7/15/05
08:27netstuff@ix.netcom.com

Jim,

Why, you saw right through me. Your astute ****ysis shows me and the Indians
up. So, when did you develop this profound respect for Indian people? I'm
sure you meant nothing biased in your pronouncements.

Michael

space cowboy

Historically Indian jobs are always overseas. They work hard and send
money back home. They should be willing to buy fair trade teas. Our
local news is a story of an Saudi family who kept an Indian woman a
virtual slave for domestic and love chores. I blame the IS problem on
Bill Gates who cried before Congress about a shortage of IS and now is
developing half of the next Windows release in India. I need to switch
to Linux.

Jim

michael plant

Funny you should mention Linux. I've been toying with that idea myself,
but, as was called to my attention, it would require my starting a brand new
hobby with lots of steep learning curve, and tea is about as intellectual as
I get.

BTW, I spent some time in India some time ago, and I did see a couple people
working at local jobs, so they can't all be IS'ers or be working overseas,
eh?

Michael

Space Cowboy1121438856.571067.260340@g14g2...leg roups.com7/15/05
10:47netstuff@ix.netcom.com

maxim voronov

I posted this link last month. But here it is again:
http://www.transfairusa.org/

Michael's concern is a valid one, indeed. But this is why Transfair
(and I am not affiliated with them in any way) is the indepenedent
not-for-profit agency that certifies products as fair trade. So the
most sure way to ensure that the product you are buying is fair trade
is to buy ones that are *certified* fair trade by transfair.

I am not as familiar with Tea trade as with coffee trade, but in the
coffee realm WTO has been dispensing "wise" advice to countries in
Latin America, Asia and Africa to grow more coffee. This has resulted
in overproduction of coffee, with supply greatly exceeding the demand.
This has allowed the coffee distributors to pay farmers as little as
they wanted, knowing that they had no choice but to settle for any
price they would give them. Interestingly, this did not result in
savings for consumers. Starbucks (before it started to carry *some*
fair trade coffee) used to pay $1.39/lb of coffee, which is above the
minimum of $1.26/lb required by transfair. The problem is that they
were paying this to the middleman, who paid a tiny fraction of this to
the actual growers. So the problem was simply that they did not want
to re-shuffle their procurement system. Fair trade simply insures that
the growers earn a living wage. This is not about luxury, folks! It's
a matter of life and death.

As far as teas, I believe it's a similar situation. And I don't think
it's exclusive to India. The In Pursuit of Tea folks report the dire
conditions in many areas of China, where farmers simply abandon their
farms and move to cities, because they can no longer survive with the
kind of income they are getting from the tea business. But there is
little fair trade tea from China. Rishi has some Yunnan black and
Puergh teas that are certified fair trade. But that's about that.
IPOT also claims to pay the farmers a fair price, but their teas are
not fair trade certified.

Speaking of which, anybody knows of any other retails that carry fair
trade certified Chinese or Taiwanese teas? I'd love to find out of
places where I can get such teas, if possible.

Best,

Maxim