LETTERS: Mechanising tea plantations is inevitable

Given that Kenya consumes only five per cent of the tea it produces, and exports the rest, it is essential that the local industry remains globally competitive — and the only way it can do so is to modernise operations through mechanisation and automation. Several industries with similar challenges will also follow suit in a matter of time.

Any person who rationally looks at the production economic facts will realise that globally tea farmers are losing competitiveness because of escalating costs of production. Those are the clear trends ahead.

While that is the eminent fact, it is important to have the discussions around tea mechanisation driven by facts and not emotions to arrive at a workable middle ground that ensures viability of the industry and thus is beneficial to both sides of the equation.

Blind lobbying by trade unionists will not help the situation, as has been demonstrated many times throughout history.

History informs us that whenever industries are threatened by costs of production, they turn to more efficient ways to cut such costs. The tea sector is one such sector that is facing a rise in costs of production currently.

Industry research shows that almost 80 per cent of the costs of producing tea are fixed. Fixed meaning that little can be done to grow output unless they are met and that there is no easy way around such costs unless technology is involved.

Unfortunately, labour in tea gardens account for about 50 per cent of the costs of production. Add other fixed costs like fertiliser, fuel and energy costs — which have been rising — and it is easy to see why the sector is in urgent need of reforms.

In addition falling prices at auctions, less demand for Kenya’s tea exports and greater competition from growers in India and China are adding to the pressure to reform.

Without a way around the costs, Kenyan tea will become less competitive, lower quality and eventually die a natural death.

Mechanisation and automation of tea gardens is the answer. So why mechanise?

Mechanical harvesting of tea addresses both labour and quality issues — the two critical factors that will ensure that Kenyan tea remains competitive.

In a paper published in 1998 by Ramaswamy Ravichandran and Ramaswamy Parthiban, the Impact of Mechanisation of tea harvesting on the quality of tea in Southern India, it was found that the chemical quality parameters and sensory evaluation of black teas changed with the method of plucking.

Hand-plucked tea, the paper found, was very rich in their green leaf biomedical precursors and had higher contents constituents of tea quality than shear-plucked tea.

But here is the interesting bit: quality deterioration of tea was mainly due to mechanical injury and non-selective plucking with shear harvesting (which is a mechanical process), not the fact that it was shear harvesting as a method of harvesting.

This means that with proper guidelines and professionalism, quality of tea picked mechanically should not be a worry.

The paper also found out that over time, tea obtained by shear harvesting from a continuously sheared (mechanised) field over a prolonged period was found to be superior.

In summary, the use of shears (mechanisation) reduced the yield and increased the plucking average with a net decrease in cost of production compared to hand plucking.

On costs, research indicates that two workers operating a mechanical harvester with two others assisting (handling and quality control) for a day can bring in the equivalent of leaf of 12 workers hand-plucking tea.

It is therefore obvious that mechanical harvesting addresses both labour and quality issues.

Lobbyists will say that mechanisation will lead to workers being laid off, which in the Kenyan situation has never happened since mechanisation started over 20 years ago.

But what is better: — let the industry die a natural death for being uncompetitive or steer it towards a more sustainable, profitable path?

It is clear that mechanisation will ensure a leaner but a well paid and higher skilled workforce.

Morris Aron, Nairobi.