The last week of my vacation I headed to Sri Lanka. With just a week there we decided to do an overview of some of what the country had to offer…namely tea plantations, national parks and the beach. I've been to tea areas before. After all Turkey has a vibrant tea culture with tea grown in the Rize area and India proudly boasts its Darjeeling tea. However I ended up being overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the land dedicated to growing tea in Sri Lanka. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the tea plantations that seem to be endless to my eyes account for just 4% of the land mass of Sri Lanka. I then got more curious - turns out that tea only counts for 2% of GDP but totals in at 15% of exports. It might be 15% of Sri Lankan exports but it accounts for up to 23% of the world tea market (ranking number one or two - Kenya is a close competitor).
As we drove through the tea country and I watched women working in fields to pick the tips off the plants, often on hillsides that I couldn't even imagine balancing on; I was struck by just how labor intensive this crop is. Employing over a million people, the tea sector employs at least 5% of the country's population. Many of those the men that care for the plants and spray pesticides from a container on their back and the women who strap a bag onto the back to place tea leaves in before accumulating them in a wicker basket earning around 500 rupees a day (according to our driver), approximately $3.80. And yet the smiles on their faces are big. They chat as they go. They leave their houses in the early morning to walk to the current field they are working on, taking a break mid morning for breakfast. They lay a wooden stick on top of already picked plants as a guide for how far down to pick the next ones. They take a break for lunch. They pick all afternoon. Then they get up and do it all over again the next day. Think about that the next time you drink a cup of Ceylon tea.
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