KOLKATA : The Food and Agriculture Organisation's Intergovernmental Group (FAO IGG) on tea will discuss the South Indian experience in small-holder development to establish how the empowerment of village self-help groups has replaced agents, improving price transparency and supply chain efficiency.

The FAO meet will be held next week in Nairobi in Kenya, right after an international business conference organised by the Kenyan Tea Board (KTB), which will discuss the global over-supply position with a plea to stop expansion of area under tea cultivation.

At the KTB meet, scheduled to begin on November 26, the FAO would review the global tea situation. All the major tea producing countries, including a 14-member Indian tea delegation led by Tea Board chairman, Basudeb Banerjee, and represented by producer bodies like the Indian Tea Association (ITA) and the United Planters' Association of Southern India (UPASI) are expected to participate in the symposium.

Mr. Banerjee told The Hindu that India too favoured a policy of stopping expansion of area under tea. He said that although in India prices had improved by about Rs.8 a kg, thanks to better domestic demand and exports, globally there was a trend of over-supply. He is slated to talk at the international conference on global trading and Geographical Indication (GI) as a tool for promoting tea.

As for the FAO meeting, it was learnt that the issue of the smallholder tea sector in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu would be discussed in a paper on global traceability systems and requirements, which the FAO said were now becoming firmly embedded within the global tea trading system. The paper found that a dense organisational and institutional presence provided a vital ingredient to the participation of smallholders in global supply chains.

Also to be discussed at the FAO meeting is the issue of minimum residue levels of pesticide in tea. This issue has been discussed in FAO IGG meetings before and a working group has been set up under the joint leadership of India and the U.K. to co-ordinate, prioritise and accelerate the industry's submissions on this. Accordingly, a meeting of producing nations has already been held in India.

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