International Tea Day: A Field-To-Cup Journey In Sustainability

Forbes

21-05-2025

Vintage Teapot Pouring Tea in Tea cup
On May 21, the world will celebrate International Tea Day, a moment not just to sip but to assess and do some reflection. This year's theme, 'Tea and Fair Trade,' calls for a renewed focus on sustainability, transparency, and justice in a global tea market whose value is expected to rise to $362 billion in 2029 from $260 billion in 2023 according to Statista. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, global tea production reached 6.5 million metric tons in 2021, with China accounting for nearly half of that output. India, Kenya, and Sri Lanka followed as major producers. The industry supports an estimated 13 million people worldwide, including around 9 million smallholder farmers, typically individuals or families cultivating less than two hectares of land, often relying on manual labor and local resources for production. Smallholders are responsible for growing approximately 60% of the world's tea.
KAHIGA-INI, TETU, NYERI, KENYA - 2019/02/18: Women workers are seen plucking tea-leaves at Nyayo Tea ... More Zone in Nyeri County. The farm is a state corporation producing and processing tea leaves. Kenyan tea is some of the best quality black tea in the world, winning international acclaim for its taste and aroma. els of a (Photo by Billy Mutai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, tea is one of the most climate-sensitive crops globally. Rising temperatures, shifting monsoons, and extreme weather events are already disrupting production in key regions. Kenya's tea production fell by 13.55% during the first two months of 2025, primarily due to unusually dry weather conditions, according to the Tea Board of Kenya. Similarly, erratic rainfall patterns in India are threatening crop consistency and farmer livelihoods.
According to research supported by Future Climate for Africa (FCFA), tea production in African countries like Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda is highly vulnerable to climate change due to the crop's sensitivity to temperature, rainfall, and extreme weather events. Tea thrives only within narrow agro-climatic zones, making it especially susceptible to climate shifts such as prolonged droughts, heatwaves, and intensified storms.
As average temperatures rise and rainfall patterns become increasingly erratic, yields for tea plants are likely to decline, input costs will rise, and both smallholder farmers and large estates will face mounting pressure to adapt. Small-scale producers, who often lack financial resources, may struggle to afford climate-smart agricultural practices, like mulching, composting, or irrigation and could be forced to abandon tea altogether if conditions worsen. Meanwhile, large estates may face lower labor productivity and escalating costs to maintain soil quality and water availability. Without timely and targeted adaptation strategies, the long-term sustainability and profitability of Africa's tea sector remain at serious risk.
Women are harvesting tea leaves in Kondoli Tea Garden on International Tea Day in Nagaon District of ... More Assam, India, on May 21, 2024. (Photo by Anuwar Hazarika/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Sustainability in tea must go beyond pesticides and water usage. It must include ethical labor practices, transparent supply chains, and equitable profit-sharing. According to the Rainforest Alliance, certified tea farms typically demonstrate better wages, safer working environments, and more responsible land stewardship. According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, more than 13 million people are employed in the global tea sector, many of whom work under exploitative and unsafe conditions.
Women dominate the lower tiers of tea labor, from plucking to packaging and remain vastly underrepresented in management, ownership, or policy influence. According to the United Nations Development Program, tea garden workers in Bangladesh, most of whom are women, remain among the country's most marginalized groups. Despite their dominance in the workforce as tea leaf pickers and factory workers, they face low wages, harsh conditions, and limited access to healthcare and education for their children. Bangladesh, home to hundreds of tea plantations, is one of the world's leading tea exporters, yet the labor conditions for its predominantly female workforce remain deeply inequitable. In Bangladesh, where over 60 % of tea workers are women, wages often fall below $1.25 per day, as reported in the Alarabiya English.
In Kenya, one of the largest tea exporters in the world, a 2023 investigation by the BBC exposed systemic sexual abuse on plantations supplying major international tea brands. These cases are not isolated, they reflect structural issues in the global tea supply chain that disproportionately harm women.
As reported by the 2020 United Nations Common Country Analysis, structural gender inequality in tea-producing countries results in women being paid less than men for the same work and being more exposed to unsafe and exploitative conditions.
Tea shopping, consumers have a choice.
According to a 2020 McKinsey & Company U.S. consumer sentiment survey, more than 60% of respondents said they would pay more for products with sustainable packaging. This aligns with findings from NielsenIQ, which reported that 78% of U.S. consumers consider a sustainable lifestyle important. Products that make environmental, social, and governance claims experienced an average of 28% cumulative growth over five years, compared to 20% growth for products without such claims.
Ethical labeling empowers consumers to support better wages, safer conditions, support women's rights and climate resilience through everyday purchasing decisions, but it also requires supply chain transparency to be meaningful, not just marketing. As tea continues to flow across borders and breakfast tables, consumers, corporations, and governments all have a role to play. What we choose to support, ethically sourced or exploitatively produced will determine whether the future of tea is sustainable, equitable, and just.