A tea picker in the Bearwell tea estate of Sri Lanka. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, May 20 2026 (IPS)

The tea in your cup this morning began its journey in someone else’s hands. Hands whose work most of us never think about. Almost certainly, those hands belonged to a smallholder farmer tending a small plot of land, plucking leaves by hand beneath long mornings of mist and rain.

Two leaves and a bud. Two leaves and a bud. Thousands of times. Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world’s poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure.

Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world's poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure

Tea is the most popular drink on earth after water. Global production reached 7.3 million tonnes last year, and per capita consumption continues to rise steadily. From the outside, the sector appears healthy.

Yet the millions of smallholder farming families driving that growth in China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda and beyond need stronger support if the sector’s momentum is to endure.

The geography of tea production is also a geography of economic necessity, linked to patterns of economic dependence and rural livelihoods. Kenya is the world’s largest tea exporter.

Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi and Rwanda rank among the global top ten. In these economies, revenues from tea exports help finance food imports and sustain rural livelihoods across entire regions. The sector remains a major source of employment and income for millions of poor families worldwide.

That income is more fragile than the industry’s headline numbers suggest. International tea prices, adjusted for inflation, have been declining for four decades.

The sector’s nominal value has expanded, while the real purchasing power of many producers has stagnated. FAO has documented what this means at the household level: when farmgate prices fall, smallholder families reduce spending on food, education and health care.

Smallholder producers also face limited market access, inadequate extension services, weak access to credit and technology, and persistent asymmetries in how value is distributed across the supply chain.

As production costs rise and price increases transmit unevenly through markets, many farming families struggle to generate sufficient returns to reinvest in farm renewal, climate adaptation or productivity improvements. These pressures heighten income volatility and make long-term planning increasingly difficult.

Tea production and processing are major sources of employment and income for women across East Africa and South Asia. When smallholder tea farming families prosper, women’s economic participation will determine whether that prosperity and stability hold.

Programmes that support women directly through training, market access and financial resources consistently produce stronger outcomes for both households and communities. In many tea-growing regions, women sustain not only household economies, but also the continuity of the knowledge and labor on which the crop depends.

Tea cultivation relies on highly specific agro-ecological conditions: altitude, rainfall patterns and temperatures shaped gradually over centuries in the regions where production became concentrated.

These conditions are becoming harder to predict and increasingly difficult to sustain. More erratic rainfall, fluctuating temperatures, and extreme weather events are already impacting both yields and quality.

For a smallholder farmer without savings or insurance, a lost harvest is not a temporary setback. It immediately affects household spending on food, medicine and schooling.

The unevenness of that burden is a central challenge. Larger operations often possess greater capacity to adapt through irrigation, diversification, upgrading and financial reserves.

Smaller producers, by contrast, frequently get trapped between increasing climate risks and limited investment capacity. Investment needs to be calibrated to the realities of smallholder tea farming rather than assumptions drawn from larger commercial operations.

What is at stake extends beyond a commodity market. Several tea-growing landscapes have been formally recognized by FAO as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems. These landscapes were shaped over generations through accumulated farming knowledge and long relationships between land, crop and community.

Tea cultivation depends on delicate balances of shade, slope, rainfall, soil health, and inherited knowledge built gradually over generations. Climate-related stress threatens these landscapes alongside the livelihoods and agricultural continuity they sustain.

More efficient, inclusive and sustainable value chains, including greater local value addition and stronger producer participation in markets, are essential if the benefits of the growing tea economy are to reach both the people and the environments that sustain it. Per capita tea consumption in many producing countries remains relatively low, meaning the sector’s growth potential is still substantial.

Ensuring the sector’s viability, however, requires more than rising consumption levels. Smallholder producers need better access to finance, markets, technology, and climate adaptation support calibrated to their realities.

More transparent and balanced value chains, targeted investment that reaches women directly, and stronger incentives for reinvestment at farm level will determine whether the industry’s future growth will remain economically and socially sustainable.

The farmer who grew your tea will get up again tomorrow morning before sunrise. The future of the sector depends on ensuring this remains a viable livelihood option.

You want to see a bright tea future? Join us in celebrating International Tea Day on 21 May!

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Pulses are highly nutritious and their consumption is associated with many health benefits. They are rich in proteins and minerals, high in fibre and have a low fat content. Pulses are produced by plants of the Leguminosae family. These plants have root nodules that absorb inert nitrogen from soil air and convert it into biologically useful ammonia, a process referred to as biological nitrogen fixation. Consequently, the pulse crops do not need any additional nitrogen as fertilizer and help reduce the requirement of fossil fuel-based chemical nitrogen fertilization for other crops. Expansion of pulse production, therefore, can play a vital role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Boubaker Ben Belhassen

While pulses are produced in all regions of the world, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa together account for about half of global production. Cultivation of dry bean, a category comprising many different types of beans, is the most widespread across different regions of the world. In 2012-14, sub- Saharan Africa accounted for 24 percent of global production of dry beans, Latin America and the Caribbean for about 24 percent, Southeast Asia for about 18 percent, and South Asia for about 17 percent. South Asia accounts for about 74 percent of chickpea production and 68 percent of pigeonpea production. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 96 per cent of the production of cowpea, a legume specific to arid regions. North America is the biggest producer of lentils and dry peas.

India is the biggest producer and consumer of pulses. Indian demand for pulses is a major driver of the global economy of pulses: India accounts for about 24 percent of global production of pulses and 30 percent of global imports. In contrast with stagnation of production of pulses from 1960s through 1990s, the last 15 years have seen a doubling of production of pulses in India. In 2017, India produced about 23 million tonnes of pulses.

Concerted efforts of agricultural scientists and breeders under the aegis of CGIAR institutions and national agricultural research systems (NARS) have played a critical role in facilitating the growth of pulse production over the last fifteen years. Research on pulses under CGIAR is led by ICRISAT, ICARDA and CIAT. Significant work has been done by these institutions to conserve genetic resources of pulse crops and also develop new cultivars. Currently, ICRISAT holds 20 764 accessions of chickpeas and 13 783 accessions of pigeonpeas, ICARDA has 11 877 accessions of lentils and CIAT holds 37 938 accessions of Phaseolus beans. In addition, many national gene banks hold substantial repositories of genetic resources. For example, national gene banks in India have over 63 000 accessions of different pulse crops. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, adopted by the 31st Session of the Conference of FAO in 2001, has provided the institutional framework for international collaboration in using these genetic resources. These genetic resources have been used to develop short-duration and disease-resistant varieties, and varieties that can be grown in diverse climatic conditions across the world.

Vikas Rawal

Experience of many countries over the last two decades shows that considerable improvement in the yields of pulses can be achieved with greater adoption of improved varieties and scientific agronomic practices. Large, industrial-scale farms in developed countries like Canada and Australia benefit from economies of scale, particularly in the deployment of machines, and higher use of improved varieties of seeds, inoculants and plant protection chemicals. On the other hand, pulse production on smallholder farms in most countries continues to be characterized by low yields and high risk. Given the low and uncertain returns from pulses, most of the smallholder production takes place on marginal soils, on land without irrigation facilities and with little access to technological improvements. Smallholder producers of pulses in developing countries lack access to improved varieties of seeds, knowledge about appropriate agronomic practices, and resources for buying modern inputs. Consequently, yield gaps on smallholder farms are high. In countries marked by smallholder production, pulse crops remain unremunerative compared with other competing crops. Low levels of per hectare margins act as a double disadvantage for smallholder producers of pulses: given the small sizes of their farms, low per hectare margins result in abysmal levels of per worker and per farm incomes.

The growth of pulse production over the last decade-and-a-half has been a result of concerted public action towards developing improved varieties and identifying suitable agronomic varieties, to make cultivation of pulses attractive for farmers under diverse agro-climatic conditions and economic contexts across the world. Increasing support to smallholder pulse production in the form of public extension services, provision of improved technologies and inputs, and availability of credit and insurance facilities can go a long way towards closing yield gaps on smallholder farms and making production of pulses more remunerative. The key lies in simultaneously ensuring that production of pulses is remunerative for smallholder producers and prices of pulses are affordable for consumers.

Boubaker Ben Belhassen is Director, Trade and Markets Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Vikas Rawal is Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The Trade and Markets Division of FAO recently released a report titled The Global Economy of Pulses that can be accessed here: http://www.fao.org/3/i7108en/I7108EN.pdf.