Growers told to adopt latest techniques for manufacturing, plucking Kangra tea

Our Correspondent

Palampur, March 29

Jagjivan Pal, Chief Parliamentary Secretary (CPS), today asked tea growers of the Kangra valley to adopt the latest techniques for manufacturing and plucking tea keeping in view the acute shortage of labour which had forced 50 per cent tea growers to abandon their tea gardens in the past 10 years.

Pal was speaking at a tea workshop organised by the state Agriculture Department here. The main theme of the workshop was the mechanisation of the tea industry in the Kangra valley. In his inaugural address, Pal stressed the need for improving productivity, quality and overall economics of tea plantations in the Kangra valley.

He expressed grave concern that that at the international and national levels, tea production had increased, but in the Kangra valley tea production, which was over 17 lakh kg tea in 1998, had declined to 10 lakh kg.

“Despite being well equipped with the intrinsic quality and at par with that of the world famous teas, Kangra tea is struggling for existence. The main reasons for such a situation is the non-availability of skilled workers, high cost of production, small volume of the produce, that too diversified in green and black types, and heterogeneity in the finished product,” he added.

“The mechanisation of farm operations in tea plantations across tea-growing countries have been evolved to tackle labour shortage and complete on time farm operations, particularly leaf harvesting,” the CPS said.

He said Japan, China, Russia and Australia were the tea-growing countries which had designed and fabricated machines as per their needs where almost the entire harvesting was done mechanically. However, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia were using machines as a tool only to tackle the peak flush period. He said today Kangra tea needed mechanisation for manag-ing future labour sho-rtage problem.

“Even African countries which in general are considered to be labour sufficient, particularly in central and southern regions, have also adopted partial mechanical harvesting,” he added.

Pal said to mitigate labour shortage and improve the profitability of the tea grower, Kangra should adopt mechanisation of tea farm operations as an alternative option.

“Kangra tea has a glorious history, decades’ old unique quality of this tea, which brought international recognition in the past through medals and certificates, should not be compromised. Therefore, there is need to adopt a plucking strategy which restricts deterioration of the quality of the harvested leaf to the minimum.”

He said the Agriculture Department should own the responsibility of educating the growers on handling and using machines. The core issue of repairing and servicing the machines should also not be overlooked, Pal said.