Tea is part of daily life in Bangladesh to a degree that is difficult to overstate. It is there from the first light of morning, through work breaks and into the evening, always close at hand. Guests are welcomed with it and difficult conversations often become easier once the cups are out. Even a brief pause in a busy day feels incomplete without something warm in hand. This deep love for tea has kept it among the country's most consumed beverages, so production has grown to keep up and the gardens have become a backbone of the rural economy. But that deep love does not mean the industry behind it is doing well. The truth is, the people who grow and process the leaves are caught in a system that is letting them down. This problem has several connected parts, and the most pressing is the gap between what labourers need to earn and what the gardens can actually pay.
Tea garden workers in Bangladesh currently earn Tk 187 a day. That is not enough to support a family anywhere, and it becomes harder still when the prices of everyday goods keep climbing. Driven by desperation, workers in Habiganj and other districts are currently on partial strike demanding Tk 500 daily wage. Given the rising cost of basic necessities, this demand is hard to argue with. But this also presents a counterproductive dilemma for the industry. A wage hike would drive up production costs, potentially delivering a fatal blow to gardens already grappling with losses. Even marginally profitable estates could be pushed into the red. This creates a difficult situation where the survival of the industry and the welfare of workers are pitted against each other. The poor living conditions of labourers cannot be ignored, but neither can the danger of the whole sector collapsing. If gardens close under the financial weight, it is the workers who will pay the most because they will lose their only source of income. The real solution is to make the industry productive enough to pay workers better without making the gardens financially weaker.
Low productivity is one of the main reasons the industry finds it hard to turn a profit. Bangladeshi tea gardens produce on an average around 1,400 kilograms per hectare. Kenya, by comparison, manages roughly 3,500 kilograms from the same area and Vietnam produces between 3,200 and 3,300. The gap has a direct effect on production costs. Consequently, returns on investment shrink, making it nearly impossible to compete on price in international markets.
Much of this comes down to aging plants. Research indicates that about 35 per cent of tea garden land carries seed-grown bushes over 60 years old. Tea bushes, like any crop, have a productive lifespan. Older bushes yield less, and replacing them with better varieties can raise output considerably. The experience of Panchagarh shows what is possible. Its gardens are relatively young and planted almost entirely with clone varieties, yielding nearly 2,500 kilograms per hectare while the national average is around 1,270 kilograms. But replacing old bushes is not easy for an owner. Clearing and replanting a large area means losing several years of production, and a garden that is already in financial trouble will naturally hesitate to give up today's income for a return that may only come years later.
Climate change adds to these problems. Rainfall has become increasingly erratic, with roughly half the year bringing heavy rain and the other half slipping close to drought. Tea bushes suffer under both. When drought pushes temperatures to 37 or 38 degrees Celsius, new leaf growth stalls and output falls. Irrigation could prevent much of this damage and the technology is already there, but putting it in place across all gardens on a necessary scale has proven difficult and expensive. This is an area where public investment could make a real difference.
There has been some progress on the market side as well. Since the Tea Board introduced a minimum price at auction, growers have a basic safety net. Gardens are also allowed to sell up to 25 per cent of their output directly under their own brands, bypassing the auction. But very few have done so. Gardens that remain in the traditional auction system find it hard to raise their incomes however efficiently they farm, because they are shut out of the better prices available in the broader market. In the long run, bringing more gardens into direct retail, even through cooperatives or joint ventures, would help both the growers and the industry.
A government taskforce has already mapped out much of what needs to change, publishing 59 recommendations across eight priority areas. One particularly important proposal is to treat tea gardens as agricultural enterprises for financing purposes. Tea farming currently borrows under industrial loan terms despite being fundamentally agricultural in nature. That mismatch pushes interest rates to 13.75 per cent, more than double what farmers in other agricultural sectors pay. Reclassification could slash that rate to 6.0 per cent, unlocking vital capital that gardens desperately need for replanting and irrigation.
There is also a surprisingly large opportunity inside the gardens themselves. Around 45 per cent of tea garden land is not used for growing tea. Some of it may be planted with tea and the rest could support other activities. Fruit, forestry, livestock or other suitable ventures could bring in extra income and create jobs if managed well. That would mean the gardens are no longer depending entirely on tea and could give workers additional ways to earn. Tea remains one of the very few products Bangladesh manages to export at real volume, which raises the stakes on all of this considerably. If the sector remains trapped between and among low wages, high costs and weak profits, it will be costly for the entire economy and Bangladesh will be poorer on account of this.
