Daniel Wolfram
Where’s the tea? Kenyan tea farmers face brutal collapse as climate crisis wrecks harvests.
Autumn is here, which means that the teapots are going to get busy the rest of the year.
But because of the unpredictable weather in East Africa, there is a real possibility of the shelves being empty at the supermarkets.
To make matters worse, the farmers are struggling to make a living because of it.
Scared for survival
In Kenya, wild and unpredictable weather swings are devastating harvests. Heavy rains now hit during supposed dry seasons, while sudden heatwaves and severe storms ruin crops without warning.
Kenya supplies half of the black tea consumed in the United Kingdom. That has led to higher supermarket prices, but it has not helped local workers, as corporate brokers absorb most profits.
According to the Independent, Nelson Ngeno, head of the Fintea union that represents the tea farmers in Kenya, said that farmers are “really scared” as their livelihoods get “cut short” by changing conditions.
Harvests have gone down 30 percent in recent months. “Climate is really affecting our farmers,” Ngeno said. “It is very serious.”
Forced to take out loans
A single hailstorm in western Kenya ruined thousands of tea bushes earlier this year, which set the harvest back four months.
Farmer Lilian Mutai Levin Langot lost her entire crop. “It was scary. The hailstones hit everything. On the tea plants, only the stems remained,” she said. “I could not pick anything. It meant there was no income.”
Her annual earnings of £692 will fall below £520 this year. She took out a loan to help with her financial struggles, but her cows starved after she ran out of money to feed them.
“When we see the rain, we are just hoping: ‘Don’t let it be the hailstones. Let it just be the rain’,” she said.
A brewing storm of poverty
Other farmers face the same struggles as Langot. Some farmers earn just under £1 a day. One of them, Paul Kipsigei Koech, has to stretch that pound for the nine family members he is responsible for.
“The income is really low to support the entire family,” Koech said. “There is no breakfast. No lunch.”
Another farmer, Gladys Maiywa, makes £17 a month. She has to feed eight children. “If we get droughts for one, two or three months, we don’t get money,” she said.
A third farmer in the region, Philip Kitur, saw his crop yield cut in half by July. “A long time ago, the weather was very, very reliable, but now the weather patterns have changed,” he said. “It is very painful.”
