Economic Activity Impacts Flashcards
Environmental Impacts: Comparative Impacts
- does not have the same degree of negative ecological impacts in comparison to other crops
- less edaphic disruption (as it is a deep rooted perennial crop) less mechanisation (as hand plucking is dominant globally and preferable for quality),
- less synthetic fertilisers (225kg/ha) used (as camelia sinensis is a hardy species of plant, which can survive in a wide range of biophysical conditions).
Environmental Impacts: negative impacts of industrial tea production
Agricultural production currently accounts for 40 per cent of global land-use and is responsible for 70 per cent of projected losses in terrestrial biodiversity
Sri Lanka: takes between 1.5 - 2.5 kgs of wood to produce 1kg of tea (habitat reduction)
Continuous monoculture, or mono-cropping, where the same species is grown year after year, can lead to the quicker build-up of pests and diseases, and then rapid spread where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen
Pesticides leads to residue
- eutrophication
- soil degradation at an average annual rate of 2.8%
Environmental Impacts: Positive
- Organic production
- Biological pest control
- Drought and flood tolerant HYVs
- Precision agriculture + technology
- Restoration and conversation of grasslands (Chagusaba) and tea forests (Pu’er Yunnan) and agroforestry
Economic Impacts: Poverty and Impacts (PLA)
Poverty
- average tea worker earns $0.03 for every box of 80 tea bags
- full time workers earn a wage of $1.80
- in Malawi: 1.25
- in Sri Lanka, 1/3 of estate sector live in poverty
In 2017, 126,000 girls under the age of 18 were rescued from domestic work in Delhi
- India created the Plantation Labour Act - which deducts wages by at least 30% for meals and accommodation (provision include housing, medical facilities, etc but only for workers employed for 6 months)
Economic Impacts: Small holders + Value Chain Inequity
- In countries like Kenya and Sri Lanka, approximately 3 million smallholders accounted for over 60% of tea production 2009
- Unequal chain value: for every kg of packaged tea that is osld, tea brands and supermarkets take a sizeable cut (up to 95% in some cases), while less than 5% remains on tea estates to pay workers
- Only 0.16% of profits trickle down to tea pluckers (landless peasants)
- occurs because smallholders have less negotiating power, and less access to technology / organic certification
SMALL HOLDER VULNERBAILITY - in a globalised market (industrialisation and export orientation of agriculture) smallholders have been marginialised - pressure to switch from traditional polycultures to monocultures
- inputs make up a larger proportion of spending
- tea market volatility
- pesticide treadmill
Economic Impacts: Positive
- 9 million smallholders employed
- 10% of Kenyans and Sri Lankans are employed in the tea sector
- Tea production pays for food import bills (60% of Kenya’s bill comes from tea exports)
- Fair trade minimum prices, access to markets, better working conditions
- Livelihood support by the PLA
- Speciality, certified and organic tea produced by smallholders and estates in developing countries is fetching a higher market price
- Intercropping and agroforestry bring in higher long-term returns
- HYVs provide greater future profits and resilience to climate change impacts
Social Impacts: Health
- India: average life expectancy for a tea plucker is 50
- 45% of plantation workers suffer from water-borne diseases (diarrhoes, typoid)
- 47% of tea workers do not have access to potable water
- 26% of tea workers do not have access to a toilet
- outdated tea factory machinery
- factory workers can suffer from jaundice, eye iritation, asthma, allergice reactions to fumes
- anaemia is leading contributor to maternal deaths in Assam’s tea estates (363 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births - in contrast to 174)
Social Impacts: Pesticide Poisoning and Heavy Metal Contamination
- glysophate (Round up) is a pesticide used globally - applied to tea via manual foliar spraying (exposing workers to carcinogens)
- is legal with MRLS in place
- 5% of all tea workers are direclty involved with pest control
- WHO: at least 3 million people annually are poisoned by pesticides - of this, 200 000 people die
- 2.5 million tons applied to fields each year
- DDT is present in 67% of tea
- 59% of tea contains pesticide residue
- 37% of tea fails the EU MRL limits and is rejected by the region
- heavy metals are detrimental particularly with bioaccumulation in the foetus
- acceptable limit of lead in reproductive health is 0.5g on a daily basis
- 83% of Chinese teas have levels above this limit when consuming 4 cups of tea daily
- tea tested close to highways and exposed to surface dust contamination had up to 4.4g of lead per L
Social impacts: Gender discrimination + Child labour
- women make up 2/3 of the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty globally
- in Asia, approx 95% of tea pickers are women - 1% of managers are women (making them more vulnerable to discrimination)
- 78% of female tea workers are illiterate - compared to 40% of male workers
- UN rule that no child under 15 should work full time
- 40 000 children work picking tea leaves in Western Uganda for as little as 30c a day
- predominately used in agriculture (71% of child labour / 108 million children in this industry)
- about 59% of all children in hazardous work are in agriculture
Social Impacts: Positive
- Employment and livelihood for 9 million smallholders and 13 million globally
- Increasing smallholder ownership as opposed to landless workers (8 million smallholders in Asia and Africa – 70% of tea production)
- Satisfactory provision of services under the PLA in India
- 95% of pluckers and 70% of whole industry is female
- Technology makes tea work easier
- Maintenance of tea culture and traditions in SE Asia
- Sustainable (Fair Trade) certification
