Organic Tea Project Likely To Start This Year

Kolkata: The project to develop organic black tea, with funding from the Amsterdam-based Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), a UN body, is set to start in the current year itself, according to Tea Board sources. Under the project, the Tea Board will get from CFC a sum of $9,00,000 as loan repayable over seven years and another $6,00,000 as grant. The formal pact between the Union Government, which will be the guarantor to the loan, the Tea Board and CFC will be signed during the course of the year.
Three model firms, each of 100 acres, will be set up in Assam (near Tinsukia in Upper Assam), West Bengal (Darjeeling district) and Tamil Nadu (tea growing areas in Annamalais hill range of the Western Ghat). The technical support will be provided by Tocklai tea research station in Assam, Tea Board's research centre in Darjeeling and Upasi Tea Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu. While CFC would charge from the Tea Board at the prevailing LIBOR, the owners of the model firms availing themselves of the funds would be required to cough up a little more. The thrust of the CFC-funded organic black tea project will be to standardise the organic tea growing practices via proper technical support, assess the market and determine the demand to set up its commercial viability and to have a proper certification procedure. Right now, some organic tea is produced in Darjeeling district but, as the sources point out, not in a very systematic way.