INDIA: India's delicately flavoured Darjeeling tea, favoured by connoisseurs around the world, faces a crisis today.
The calamity enveloping Darjeeling's 87 picturesque tea gardens, which were started by pioneering Scotsmen over 150 years ago in the shadow of the majestic Himalayas in eastern Bengal state, threatens the livelihood of over 1.5 million workers.
"Darjeeling's tea industry faces multiple crises and under such un-remunerative conditions many gardens are likely to go under," Mr Raja Bannerjee, head of Makaibari Tea, one of area's larger and relatively progressive producers said.
He added that low yields due to soil erosion, indiscriminate use of chemical fertilisers and tough tea legislation landed the brew in this serious predicament.
According to the Darjeeling Planters' Association, the annual average tea production in the region has dropped steadily from around 12 million kg in 1991 to around 8 million kg today and production costs are far outstripping returns.
Last year, Darjeeling tea sold for 144 rupees (€3.22) per kg when production costs were almost double at 260 rupees (€5.82) per kg.
Worried planters admit that over-fertilising has turned the gardens' soil red rendering it barren.
Alongside this the region's woefully inadequate natural forest cover, decimated by politically connected "timber mafias" has accelerated soil erosion in the rain-soaked hills.
"Tea requires a special bio-diversity that has been destroyed," veteran planter and consultant, Mr Harish Mukhia, said. And though a few planters have turned to organic gardening and are attempting to rejuvenate the forest cover, the overall situation remains grim, he said.
To add to the planter's woes, nearly three-quarters of all tea bushes are over 80 years old, either diseased or need replacing. But Mr Ghosh Hazra of the Tea Research Institute laments that most planters, desperate for quick results, prefer chemicals and other short-term measures rather than wait seven years for the new bushes to become productive.
Selling Darjeeling teas blended with inferior brands as "pure Darjeeling" abroad led to India's Tea Board instituting protectionist measures like the Certified Trade Mark .
These measures, however, ran into trouble with international tea cartels refusing to open up their stocks for inspection by the Tea Board.
"European cartels were not ready to tolerate this and began promoting alternative teas from Nepal and high grade Ceylon [Sri Lanka] that are close in flavour to Darjeeling tea," Mr Bannerjee said.